Chris Puglia
Northern News Services
Published Monday, December 17, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - A teacher with 18 years of experience, seven of those years in the NWT and one in Nunavut, has firsthand knowledge of violence in schools.

When he moved to the NWT, he was physically assaulted by a student. He went to the police and pressed charges. But his principal at the time was not supportive of the action.

"I was told I had over-reacted," said the Northern teacher who asked to remain anonymous.

He said the reporting system needs to be changed to ensure teachers feel safe and comfortable coming forward.

"When administration is constantly changing it leaves you with an unknown quantity. You're not always sure what your back-up is," he said.

A number of serious recent incidents point to a disturbing trend of teacher abuse within NWT schools, which is hampering the delivery of education.

Two cases requiring police intervention occurred in Ulukhaktok and Fort Liard during the last school year.

In Ulukhaktok, a student was charged after he urinated in a teacher's water bottle. In Fort Liard, two teachers were driven out of town when they encountered harassment and threats from members of the community.

Another incident that stands out in the mind of Amanda Mallon, president of the NWT Teachers' Association, occurred in Fort Resolution.

"A nine-year-old asked a teacher if she was wearing a bullet proof vest and then punched her," Mallon said.

It's up to teachers to report suspensions and incidents of bullying against school staff and students and Mallon said there are number of problems with that approach.

"They are busy and teachers don't report some of these incidents for a number of reasons," she said. "One is they feel it reflects badly on their teaching."

Mallon added poor reporting means she isn't able to say how many suspensions or incidents of violence schools deal with on an annual basis.

In the case of the student who urinated in the teacher's water bottle, "There was a restitution meeting," she said. "The student stepped up and accepted responsibility."

The teacher finished off the school year before leaving town, a departure Mallon said was planned before the assault.

In Fort Liard, Mallon said details of what transpired to spark the threats were never substantiated, however there was a legitimate concern for the teacher's safety.

An investigation by the RCMP determined there was a "real and specific" threat to the teachers.

"The RCMP told them it would not be safe for them to stay," said Mallon.

"The association's point of view there is: there is nothing that justifies a community threatening anybody."

Other incidents have varied in severity from verbal and written threats to property damage.

Two studies, one from the Yukon and one conducted by the Canadian Teachers' Federation, support claims of high rates of violence against Northern teachers.

The Yukon study reported 77 per cent of teachers had been victims of abusive behaviour, 46 per cent had been threatened with physical violence and 39 per cent had been victims of personal violence.

The results prompted a meeting of all three of the territories' teachers' associations in Yellowknife last month.

The survey conducted by the Canadian Teachers' Federation in May 2005 found that Northern teachers experienced and witnessed the most violence and harassment in Canada.

The teacher whose principal felt he had overreacted by pressing charges says the problem stems from a lack of respect extending from parents' and students' attitudes all the way up to GNWT legislation.

"You're viewed as a teacher, not a human," he said. "You're an object as opposed to a person. Some students just call me 'teacher.' It's like calling me 'rock' or 'paperweight.'"

In his first year of teaching, parents in a Nunavut community once threatened to beat him up.

"I took a child's chewing tobacco away in Grade 7," he said of the provocation.

Despite this, he says students are generally good. However there are many factors that trigger conflict.

One sore spot is the GNWT's social pass policy. Essentially, the legislation dictates that a student between Grades 1 and 9 cannot fall behind their peer group. Under the rules a student could miss all of primary and middle school and still be allowed into Grade 10.

"I had a boy who could not do the alphabet and they put him into Grade 10," he said.

The result is a log jam of students who don't have the skills to advance through high school.

"We get kids who are taking Grade 10 social studies three or four times. They don't do Grade 10 Canadian history at a Grade 1 reading level," he said.

The atmosphere is a breeding ground for frustration that leads to severe barriers to the delivery of education and fosters bad behaviour, he said.

"When you're dealing with kids who have been allowed to slip through numerous cracks, what you're going to get is behaviour problems," the teacher said.

In the North, Mallon said, problems are further exacerbated by high teacher turnover, and the fact that "our students are not having their needs met in many ways," she said, referring to poor housing and a lack of activities in many communities.

Mallon said violence in schools has definitely contributed to teacher retention problems. In the past five years the NWTTA has seen an increase of teacher turnover and regions such as the Beaufort Delta have an annual turnover rate of 31 per cent.

On average, teachers stay in a community for only two years. Mallon said inconsistency in staff contributes to conflict.

'Teachers are not very connected to the community," said Mallon.

Violent media and the transferring of parental responsibilities to teachers to deal with behavioural problems are also major contributors to what Mallon called a nationwide problem.

"It cannot be left up to the school to do everything," said Mallon.

Mallon said one of the strategies her organization took away from the meeting was to improve the territory's reporting methods.

A plan has been developed for the NWTTA to send their own survey to teachers throughout the territory next year.

"If we don't have the information, we can't come up with proper strategies," said Mallon.

Ideally, next year's survey will serve as a baseline the NWTTA can use in the future to compare rates of violence and determine if strategies are working.

The goal is to improve student, parent and staff safety and as a result improve learning and staff retention. Currently there are provisions in the education act as well as the Criminal Code to help protect teachers and Mallon said school administrators have the responsibility to deal with conflicts.

By next year the association plans to have concrete data on the issue of violence in the classroom and from there will be able to determine what can be done to improve the situation.

"Our mandate is to look after our teachers," she said.