Who is Responsible for Breaking up Fights at School?

“It’s still a little bit tender,” Mary Sue Garner says, referring to her no longer bruised arm. The Minnie Howard geometry teacher hurt her arm while trying to break up a fight between two students in the hallway. One of Garner’s students had wrapped his arms around an involved person in an attempt to break up the fight, and Garner grabbed the same boy   by the jacket. “I thought it would be safe, but the other boy came around and hit me.”

In 45 years of teaching, Garner has always stepped in, but been cautious to do so. She said it depended on how violent the altercation was, who was around, and if she knew the students. Garner never imagined herself breaking up fights. Isaac Schloss, a Spanish teacher at Minnie Howard, began teaching four years ago, because he enjoyed “imparting knowledge upon others.” He never pictured himself breaking up fights. “It didn’t come to mind.” Yet, he also attempted to break up the fight Garner was trying to stop.

The fight began after the bell rang. After his TA students left, Schloss went to the door to greet students coming into his class. In the hall, he saw two students, one from his TA, arguing. A crowd began to form and then a punch was thrown. Schloss did not think it was relevant that he knew one of the students involved in the fight that he broke up. “I’m gonna try to intervene and make it [the fight] not happen.”

Schloss noted that the people involved “almost wanted it to be stopped…it was a convenience thing.” Tammy Ignacio, Executive Associate Principal of Minnie Howard Campus and a former teacher shared the same view. She said kids know if a fight takes place at school it can be broken up. All three altercations resulting in suspension this year stemmed from issues outside of school. That is, they could have taken place anywhere but they just happened to occur at school.

The school where Schloss taught in Woodbridge had a policy that said to call the administration as fast as possible.  Intervening was not recommended. Garner has not been given specific advice on how to break up fights at Minnie Howard this year, but she has gone to education association sessions which gave the advice “Don’t get involved, stand back, especially if it is very physical.”

Ignacio, who has been an administrator for 12 years, and a teacher for seven, said that teachers were not told much about what to do if a fight occurred, although they are not encouraged to break up fights. The focus is more on how to prevent a fight from happening, by getting ahead of the situation. If teachers see something that looks like it could turn into an altercation, they should tell the administration. The same goes for students who see anything.

Peer mediation is a large part of both resolving altercations and preventing them. This year there have already been 26 successful peer mediations. Michael Frazier, director of peer mediation helps organize the program. Frazier said that students attend sessions at George Mason University to train them to be mediators. A typical peer mediation session involves the student mediator, the students involved in the conflict, and an adult supervising. Students involved share their side of what happened, and the mediator does not take sides, but simply helps resolve the conflict.

Maria Jones, a freshman, was in favor of the conflict-resolution program. “I think peer mediation is good because students are probably more likely to seek help and listen to kids their age than asking for help from an adult. It’s good for kids to help kids because peer mediators have a better idea of what students are dealing with; adults don’t have the same perspective. ” For students who are involved in altercations, depending on the level of fighting, consequences are usually a three to five day suspension, and a mandatory successful peer mediation. Until these tasks are completed, students cannot return to school. If a staff member is injured in an altercation, the consequences are raised and expulsion is recommended. No matter who ends fights once they have started, ACPS’s primary goal is to prevent them before they can reach that level of violence.