Local teachers have had enough of daily violence at schools, unions say

Local teachers' unions are raising the alarm on violence in classrooms.

Together in Education (TIE), a group representing education workers from the Catholic and public school boards of Waterloo region, held a press conference Thursday to share survey results that found a majority of local teachers are experiencing workplace violence.

Amy Brillinger Tuka has been a teacher in Waterloo region for 20 years and she's currently a kindergarten teacher. She says she's experienced violence in classrooms at all grade levels.

"Every single class from kindergarten to Grade 12 has violence, threats, actions, near misses happening daily. Daily. And that's not OK. It's not OKfor the employees and it's definitely not OKfor the other students who are witnessing that and making it become normal for them."

Patrick Etmanski,president of the Waterloo chapter of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, says many teachers are enduring violence in their workplaceson a daily basis.

"We're talking about physical violence. We're talking about kids throwing things. We're talking about punching, hitting, kicking, biting, spitting, swearing. We're talking about the whole gamut of violence fromkids who are as young as fourall the way up to our kids who are in Grade 12."

Survey results

TIE's goal is to document the personal experiences of local school staff liketeachers, assistants and social workers.

They're hoping their stories of workplace violence will help bring in new support and resources to deal with violent incidents that can sometimes leave school staff with a permanent, lifelong physical injury.

Out of the 1072 staff members TIE surveyed, almost all said they had experienced violence in the workplace, and about 55 per cent said they do not feel safe at school.

About 70.5 per cent of staff surveyed said they don't think their students are safe at school, citing a need for more support and consistent, effective disciplinefor students with violent behaviour.

Colleen Dietrich Sisson, president of the Educational Assistants Association ofWRDSB, said educators are getting seriously injured at schools in the region.

"It's absolutely out of this world how many people are getting hurt," she said. "We started our school year off withthreeconcussions right out of the gate in September. And it's just gotten worse."

Dietrich Sissonsays the hazards at work are making it harder to convince teachers to stay.

"We've had a mass exodus over the last couple of years of people just leaving because they're getting hurt," she said.

"That means there's less staff and they're doing double and triple duty trying to look after students and getting hurt. People are not attracted to this career anymore. The registrations and the college programs have declined significantly."