HAMPTON ROADS, Va. – For the last several weeks, News 3 has been shedding light on the violence playing out in classrooms across Hampton Roads.
Arguably, the most disturbing incident happened two months ago on Jan. 6 at Richneck Elementary where Newport News Police say a 6-year-old student intentionally shot his teacher.
Through News 3’s reporting, we’ve found many teachers and former educators who are speaking out about the violence. The behavior at schools is leaving some teachers to make tough decisions.
Julianne Marse started her teaching career in 1986 and spent most of her years at Newport News Public Schools. She said she loved it and went on to become an assistant principal in the school district for nearly a decade.
That’s when things, however, drastically changed.
“I was kicked; spit on; hit; hair pulled; bruises on me when I’d come home,” Marse said.
Marse said she was attacked by students as young as six-years old, claiming the abuse went on daily for several years. She said it became so unbearable she retired in 2019 – much sooner than she planned.
Marse is not alone.
Several teachers News 3 Reporter Antoinette DelBel spoke with across Hampton Roads said they’ve dealt with disturbing student behavior. They didn’t want to do an on-camera interview out of fear of retaliation from administration.
Another woman, however, who left teaching after four and a half years, said she was afraid to go into work every day and one scary incident was the final straw.
The former middle school math teacher asked not to use her name.
“There was a kid who brought a knife for me,” she said. “That’s just how they act. They didn’t like something you did, or they didn’t like the class.”
The former teacher said violence in the classrooms happened so often, it was normalized.
“You can’t even think about teaching and the curriculum because you’re worried about just keeping the behavior under control,” she said.
As for Marse, she now works at the college level at CNU.
She believes the out-of-control behavior is having an impact on students going into the profession.
“I've got students in the MAT program, the Masters of Arts of teaching, and they're seeing this happen and they're questioning their career choice and their major,” said Marse.
Data from the Virginia Department of Education shows at the beginning of the 2021 school year, there were 573 teacher vacancies throughout Hampton Roads.
A year later in 2022, that number jumped to 999 with Norfolk City Public Schools seeing the biggest shortage of 319 teachers.
And the teacher shortage crisis is worse in Hampton Roads compared to the rest of the state with a vacancy rate of 6.7% compared to 3.9% statewide.
The former teacher said more needs to be done to keep the teacher shortage gap from growing even more.
She said, “We need to teach kids how do you deal with your emotions because they’re not getting that at home.”
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