Heroic Student, stops teacher on teacher attack. (saves life)

[Stuart G]

http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Heroic-football-player-stops-potentially-lethal-?urn=highschool-wp10312
Yahoo. News.
12/22/11

Heroic football player stops potentially lethal teacher attack

By Cameron Smith


By all accounts, the attack looked like it would be lethal.

In the moments after the school bell rang, a 40-year-old teacher brutally attacked a fellow teacher. With screwdriver blows from English teacher Ronette Ricketts raining on the victim, fellow English teacher Cynthia Glozier, a varsity football player thought quick, relied on his athletic instincts and stopped the attack in its tracks

According to New York TV network WPIX and the Poughkeepsie Journal, among other sources, Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) High senior linebacker Justin Richardson is now being hailed as a hero and a likely lifesaver as a result.

"I saw Ms. Ricketts just hammering her in the side of head," Richardson told PIX 11 TV. "I saw a lot of blood. It was shocking. I just jammed her really hard to get the screwdriver [to] fly out of her hand. If I didn't step in she would have killed her."

Luckily for all involved, Richardson did step in to stop a shocking attack before it became a deadly one. As it is, Ricketts is still facing charges of first-degree attempted assault, second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon, and is likely to lose a job in which she was previously highly respected.
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Two women techers fighting in the halls of high school before Christmas. What is the world coming to?

[blue neen]

1. Thank God the student stepped in.

He is definitely a hero.

[trumad]

2. And some say athletes are douchebags.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

3. Al Bundy said it best: "Don't mess with a guy who played high-school football"

[Tippy]

4. Thank God this student had to courage to do the right thing

[Stuart G]

5. It isn't easy to get in between two women fighting.

I did, and it was very scary the time they did. I was teaching at this school, and two 15 year olds were at it with each other.
Vicious and awful. We separated them, (myslef and another teacher) and took them away. You don't forget that stuff.

[pennylane100]

10. Does that mean it is easier to seperate two fighting men.

What is it about women fighting that makes it so much more newsworthy.

[Stuart G]

11. I did not mean to offend you.., or anyone.

.Sorry...Fighting among people at schools is common. Both men and women are hard to separate.

Those kinds of fights among teachers, is most unusual. (at least within the school itself)

[pennylane100]

20. No apology necessary,

I think I was being way too sensitive but thank you for being so nice about it.

[Aerows]

6. What is this world coming to?

First we have the teacher who took pictures of the student who hung himself instead of helping him, and now we have a teacher attacking another teacher with a screwdriver.

Holy crap.

[sorrybushisfromtexas]

8. As a teacher I take offense to your remark.

There are idiots in every profession. If you don't believe that you have never ever seen or heard from our current Republican House of Representatives. You know I am right.

[frazzled]

12. I agree with you completely

And it hurts to have such one-off stories about a member of your profession (or faith, or city, etc.) falsely become some sort of symbol for an otherwise noble enterprise.

But it does makes me think that incidents like this, with a bad apple, could possibly be prevented if there were better methods for culling out these few temperamentally unqualified teachers. When I think back on the teachers my kids had in school, and that must have been at least around 60 of them, almost all were excellent and well-suited to their profession. There were perhaps two out of that bunch (an extremely small percentage), however, who were kind of disasters. One in particular I'm thinking of (a 7th-grade science teacher) had been complained about seriously for years and years, both in terms of his academic and personal skills: yet there he remained. I think it's why many teachers themselves are slowly embracing the notion of some sort of sensible review process: they want to defend their position as the professionals they are. The problem, of course, is what kind of review will work.

Maybe this teacher just snapped suddenly, but to do it in front of kids in the classroom: well, I'm sure she'll be gone. But it should never have gotten to that situation in the first place. It would be interesting to know whether there were warning signs of instability.

[Stuart G]

14. It was a hallway fight, not in the classroom

I found this quote in a local newspaper

Here is a much more complete story on this:

The attacker it seems,,,,and I don't know more than that, other than reading it here, it seems thought she might be terminated ....
.....If the attacker thought that she was being terminated around Christmas by
her Department Chair,
and that is also mentioned ( at least in passing) it could cause someone to snap. That is no reason to attack anyone,but some might snap with that kind of news..if that is true..

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20111215/NEWS05/111215007/Poughkeepsie-High-School-stabbing
________________________________________________________________________________________________

The stabbing, he said, took place in a hallway of the school at approximately 10:03 a.m. Almost immediately, teachers, students and staff began to intervene. English teacher Ronette Ricketts managed to stab Glozier 16 times in total, he said.


Police and medics were called once Ricketts was “removed” from Glozier, he said, and the school was locked down until it was deemed secure an hour and 15 minutes later.

[Aerows]

15. There are going to be crazy people

I'm certainly not maligning the profession of teaching. You are going to have a certain number of whackos no matter what profession you are in.

As sorrybushisfromtexas pointed out, look at politics.

[frazzled]

16. I don't understand ...

what your response has to do with my post. But whatever. I think everyone has said they agree that there are the occasional whackos.

[Aerows]

17. The person above you took offense to my post

I was under the impression that you were agreeing with them being offended. If that is not the case, then my apologies for jumping the gun.

[frazzled]

18. Okay.

Let's all keep it cool. I'm sure everyone is shocked by this bizarre incident. Feel sorry for the victim.

[Aerows]

13. I wasn't generalizing that all teachers are psychotic.

My sister is a teacher, and she certainly isn't. I was just pointing out that in the last few days we've had two horrible stories. It's just terrible that there are crazy people in this world. I certainly don't blame to poor English teacher from this story that got stabbed with a screwdriver - I blame the crazy woman that went after her.

As for the Republicans in the House of Representatives... aye-yie-yie. Even worse, just look at their contenders for President. There isn't a one of them, except for maybe Hunstman, that isn't certifiable.

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. +1

[NOLALady]

7. Gives a new meaning to

deck the halls.

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. wow. student certainly is a hero