Video of Student Body-Slamming Teacher Goes Viral

By Jessica Moore

A John F. Kennedy High School freshman was arrested after assaulting his 62 year old teacher in January, in front of his class. One of his classmates had taken a video of the incident with their cellphone and it has been trending on Facebook. On the video, the student wraps his arms around the teacher and pulls him over toward a desk and knocks him into it. He then pulls him back and forcefully pushes him to the floor. The student stands over him and wrestles the physic teacher on the floor  until someone says they are going to call security, and then he moves away. The situation escalated to this point when the teacher confiscated the student’s cellphone. The video began trending as a response to a video of a police officer throwing a sixteen year old girl across a classroom at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina, an assault that also began when the student refused to give up her cellphone. The teenager was charged with third degree aggravated assault, and the teacher walked away with only a bit of pain in his upper back that he plans on getting checked out by a doctor.

The whole incident has gotten people talking about many subjects from race issues to the problems in the school district. People have began to question safety in schools. Although spokeswoman Terry Corallo tries to reassure that the safety of the staff and students is the district’s top priority. Some people bring up the fact that in the video, the teacher doesn’t seem to try to fight back. Some people over social media have classified this as a race issue because the student was black and the teacher was white. However, another reason the teacher may have not resorted to violence is a reason that Lee McNutley, a retired JFK teacher brings up. “That just shows how afraid teachers are of losing their jobs.”