By now you may have seen the viral cellphone video.
A Parkland High School student slapped one of his teachers last week.
Then he slapped her again on the other side of her face, so hard that her tousled hair covered her face and her glasses flew off.
And yet still she didn’t budge.
If she was (understandably) terrified, she didn’t show it.
She brushed her hair out of her eyes. She picked up her glasses.
And then she remained calmly seated, legs crossed, and did not move.
She did not attempt to flee.
She did not attempt to retaliate.
She did not raise a hand.
She did not raise her voice.
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She did not scream for help.
She did not address the other students in her classroom, who saw it all — and at least one of whom shot the cellphone video that has made national headlines.
In truth, she may have been too afraid to move. She may have been frozen in place, transfixed by the sheer horror of it all.
What might he do next? Would he hit her again? Would he do worse?
Thankfully, he did not, storming away in apparent frustration.
As the Winston-Salem Journal’s Lisa O’Donnell reported on Thursday, the student, a juvenile teen, has been charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault and one count of communicating threats.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Superintendent Tricia McManus rightly has recommended that the student be expelled, a process that requires a hearing. (He also needs serious help.)
Meanwhile, the district attorney and the sheriff say they have the teacher’s back. So should the rest of us.
And, for now, at least, that’s all we know.
We don’t know the backstory.
We don’t know the circumstances that preceded the teen’s joyful anger. Whatever they turn out to be, they won’t justify his attack.
For now we only know what took place in those harrowing 38 seconds.
And even in an age in which you can find all manner of violence and depravity on the internet, this one is hard to watch.
We certainly have experienced worse in the Triad. For instance, in 2012, a 17-year-old female Guilford County high school student beat a teacher so badly that he was taken to a hospital by paramedics. The student was charged with disorderly conduct, inciting a riot and felonious assault on a school administrator.
But being able to see it for yourself somehow makes it more real and more visceral.
You imagine yourself in that chair. And you wonder what you would have done in that teacher’s place.
Also, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you probably wouldn’t have reacted in the same way.
You’ll admit that you admire this teacher for what she did that day and what she did all the days preceding it, working too hard and too long in a job that pays too little and, as a bonus, can get you vilified in some corners as a woke indoctrinator of children.
For being afraid but not giving in to her fear.
And for refusing to be cowed or intimidated.
If no other good comes from that video, maybe it will make some of us think at least once before devaluing and denigrating our public school teachers.
Their work is difficult and frustrating ... and more essential than ever.
Whether it’s COVID or poverty or guns or gangs or drugs, we send many of society’s problems to them at least five days a week and expect no less than a miracle.
Too often we side with our children against them even when our children are in the wrong.
For now, for all we don’t know about this teacher, we do know this much:
She is well-regarded by her peers, many of whom wore her favorite colors, purple and orange, on the following day in school as a gesture of support and solidarity.
We also know that, one day after being part of an assault seen round the world, she was back in the classroom the next day.
“Ain’t nobody gonna come … (you) just got slapped,” her young assailant had taunted her in a singsong cadence after striking his blows.
“Go back to teaching.”
And, luckily for the rest of her students, that’s exactly what she did.