Assault in the Hallway - 9/13/07

Today I was sitting with my cooperating teacher in the corner of a hallway on “hallway duty”. The teachers are required to do this but are not given any type of communication devices so they can be potentially hurt in a dark corner of a hallway and never have a means to communicate. Today a student walked by and my cooperating teacher asked her to put her cell phone away. There are strict rules against the usage of cell phones. She replied with a rather disgusting and disrespectful come back and my teacher followed her down the hallway screaming; “Now we have a problem!” I was terrified someone would get hurt. He sent her to the office and she claimed he assaulted her, which of course wasn’t true. I was a witness. The administration asked my cooperating teacher to apologize and he of course said that he absolutely wouldn’t because he hadn’t done anything wrong. The administration should defend their staff members. If my teacher apologized he would have essentially admitted fault which would have made the school liable to get sued. It was just ridiculous.