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TRACEY WHYTE IS a teacher in a Dublin school for children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties.
She told the INTO congress in Ennis about how she has been physically attacked 20 times this year in her class of children aged 9 and 10.
Speaking to Sean O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio 1, she said:
I’ve been spat at on the face regularly, punched in the stomach, one child came at me with a fire extinguisher down a corridor running, just by luck I got through the door on time.
“It’s physical assault. We try and keep ourselves safe but it’s not that they’re just assaulting us, they could be going for another child.
“The assaults are high at the start of the year and gradually it gets better as you teach them the skills to deal with their emotional difficulties.”
Assault leave
Whyte said it’s not fair that teachers have to use up their sick leave when they need time off after being attacked. She told O’Rourke that ‘even the emotional turmoil of an assault can be draining’.
At the moment you have seven days in two years uncertified sick leave and I can’t afford to take a day off.
She wants to see ‘assault leave’ exempt from normal sick leave. She says being sick and being assaulted in the workplace are not the same thing.
She also explained how these assaults are not confined to special needs schools.
One teacher at the INTO conference this week told Whyte how she was nearly stabbed with a pair of scissors.
It seems to be acceptable. We expect it. We should not accept it.
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Class
Not to be a spoil sport but- I was always told it’s illegal to collect frogspawn?
@Kevin Hill: me also
@Colin Keogh: for educational purposes its aloud as far as I know
@Kevin Hill: It is here but schools are allowed for educational purposes. This was in NI.
@Kevin Hill: they were on ground that was drying so were going to die. Did the same myself in early march and have a few thousand tadpoles in a pond which I’ll be releasing as soon as they are frogs. Could have been famous too!
@Kevin Hill: ah whisht you
She’s delightful ! At least she didn’t waste her COVID months in and out of the off license unlike some …ahem
Illegal… Jesus every child the far side of the red cow collected tadpoles as a kid, and caught bees in a jam jar.
Jesus I’ve been doing this for years, because frogs return to the same spot every year to spawn so they generally spawn in drainage ditches near us which end up drying up. So we collect them, rear them and release them in a nature reserve near us also. Never thought to put it on the internet. Guess I missed my five minutes of fame.
The world we live in now everything is a sensation.
That’s more than a jar of frogspawn, I hope they will be released eventually
@Colin Keogh: you could have just finished reading the article
have your say