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Teacher harassment in Malvern, Pennsylvania, grabbed national headlines earlier this year. But what happened there is hardly an isolated incident.
At our Philadelphia school, situated about 30 minutes from suburban Malvern, my fellow teachers and I have daily mental health check-ins with each other. We console each other in supply closets. For years, I have given out therapists’ contact information. I have written about the safe workspace that my colleagues and I need but don’t have.
What brought this issue to the fore is a New York Times article about Malvern’s Great Valley Middle School, where teachers were alarmed to find students impersonating them on TikTok. Over 20 accounts were created to depict teachers using “pedophilia innuendo, racist memes, homophobia, and made-up sexual hookups among teachers.” The article called the Malvern case the first of its kind and “a significant escalation in how middle and high school students impersonate, troll and harass educators on social media.” But really, it is nothing more than the public documentation of a years-long problem that plagues educators online and off. Behind the headlines, teachers are regularly harassed and even assaulted.
The superintendent in Malvern said that some students’ actions were protected by free speech. He said the district did what it could but that student privacy prevented him from discussing disciplinary actions taken. Very often, however, students who engage in this type of behavior are not held accountable.
In an opinion piece last year for the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote about the phenomenon of teacher bullying and abuse, noting, “The deterioration of boundaries, compounded with poor teaching conditions, leads to a myriad of problems. It is difficult to create connections, let alone teach content while being cursed out by a student.” Since writing the article, I have experienced and watched my coworkers face some of the same hateful rhetoric seen on Malvern student TikTok accounts. Daring pupils have threatened to “smack the shit” out of me.
These are not baseless threats against educators. I have received harassing text messages and ominous telephone inquiries about my then-infant child. Once, parents snuck into my second-floor classroom in North Philadelphia to confront me about a student’s grade. Worried student bystanders whisper apologies and their peers’ proclivity to outbursts and murmur, “It’s not you.” With clenched toes and ample yoga classes, I have learned to shrug it off, but I know if left unaddressed, it will continue to escalate.
Teachers are scared. Teachers are leaving midyear. “I am going to get you fired” is a common refrain among students.
To be clear, these actions are not taken by the majority of students. But a few individual actors have created ripple effects through building and district cultures, as in Malvern. I have made the case for transparency and accountability for these incidents within the School District of Philadelphia. Although a goal of the district’s new Strategic Plan calls for district leadership to visit school buildings more frequently, nothing has changed.
On the surface level, the Philly district has little in common with Malvern, which is an affluent and well-funded district. Ours serves many students from low-income households and struggles with funding inequities. And yet, both districts are experiencing a shift in youth culture that sociologist Jonathan Haidt posits in “The Anxious Generation” is partially the result of an isolated and phone-based childhood. As social media has become more popular during my teaching tenure, I have watched student experiences of depression, perfectionism, loneliness, and community fragmentation explode.
The fallout from the pandemic — worsening student mental health and heightening criticism of teachers — has resulted in increased research on student aggression towards educational staff. But such aggression is something I’ve endured throughout my decade in the classroom.
Teacher bullying is a national education issue. Yet it continues to be hidden in Google Forms and incident report forms. Meanwhile, progressive disciplinary models such as “relationships first” or “restorative practice” often seem to fall by the wayside when it is an educator who has been harmed.
It is not that teachers are not reporting the incidents. In his work, Byonook Moon and fellow researchers found that “the extent of reporting victimization to school officials by victimized teachers is quite high; however, a large number of victimized teachers perceived school intervention following incidents as ineffective and inadequate.”
Sometimes, school administrators tell teachers they’ve “handled” the issue, but then keep the resolution under wraps.
Mind you, it is easy to hear these school-based realities and chalk it up to teachers’ inability to build rapport and embrace culturally responsive teaching. Let me assure you, even the most beloved teachers, who foster and maintain strong relationships with students, who meditate on Harry Wong and Robert Marzano’s texts, are struggling with behaviors and deserve to be taken seriously when an incident occurs.
Two years ago, in a Philadelphia NICU, I smiled at a squealing newborn wrapped in more tubing than the steamfitter’s union. “That’s it?” I thought. “This is what terrified all new parents?” His tiny pleas for milk did not contain profanities, insults, or threats of physical assault. As toddler tantrums start to surface, I remain unfazed.
There is a need for education leaders, policymakers, and the public to care about teacher harassment. Hopefully, the attention around the Malvern case illuminates the difficulties experienced nationally by teachers.
Lydia Kulina-Washburn is an urban educator and journalist in Philadelphia. Her work has been featured in Education Week, Hechinger Report, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Huffington Post. Follow her @LydiaKulina.