Voice for the Voiceless: Special Education Teachers Abused and Unheard
A look into Alexia’s experience working with non-verbal students in a self-contained classroom
In 2021, Alexia began her first year of teaching. Although Alexia was thrilled to enter a new stage of life, she was immediately met with a change. The administration of her district had decided to move her from the position that she applied for to a different position within the district. The position involved teaching in a self-contained unit (the instructor teaches all subjects) of non-verbal students. From the beginning, Alexia knew this environment would be difficult to teach in. She explained that is why she didn’t apply for the job previously.
The reason for this placement was the administration’s struggle to find a candidate that was qualified to teach in the unit she was moved to. This is not surprising when looking at the numbers.
In May of 2023, “78% of schools reported difficulty in hiring special education staff”. (Whittaker)
Not only was it difficult to find special education staff, for this district, the candidate would need a certification to teach in a moderate to intensive classroom. Often times, educators have one of two certifications.
Certifications
Mild to Moderate
Special education services for primarily academic support
Moderate to Intensive
Instructing students that need to be taught both academic and life skills
CPI (Crisis Prevention Intervention)
Although Alexia was not subject to verbal abuse from students, she endured physical abuse on a daily basis.
While general education teachers face similar setbacks, “being the victim of a physical assault [is] 2.7 times higher among special education teachers than among general education teachers” (Tiesman).
Because of this, Alexia explained there are courses that schools require, and the program that her district required was called CPI (Crisis Prevention Intervention).
Through this training they were taught a series of tactics to utilize if a student became manic. One of the tactics they learned was called nonviolent physical crisis intervention, which included a variety of holds to put the students in if they were attacked.
- CPI training reduces staff injuries by 80%; however, self-defense tactics are only allowed to be used with another person present (“Nonviolent Crisis Intervention”).
More times than not, Alexia was alone with students.
She said,
“Whenever I would turn my back and my hairs pulled and I fall to the ground there is nothing I could do to get the student to release because I could get in trouble for grabbing that student’s hand and pulling them away…so I was just kind of left to let them attack me”.
Approach to Administration
With the abuse being continuous, and Alexia beginning to face mental health challenges of her own, she went to the administration with her concerns. She explained her situation to the administration, and their response was, “well, you applied for this job”.
Although Alexia attempted to explain that she hadn’t applied for the job, they didn’t understand because there had been administration changes. The new administration didn’t understand that the previous had not only placed Alexia in a position she didn’t apply for, but others as well.
She repeatedly explained that the administration was still not understanding, and they didn’t know how to support her because they had never seen the behavioral issues, such as what was happening in her room, with the students in the high school before. All the students that she was handling had come up from the middle school that year, so those that were in her position in previous years had not experienced those problems.
Alexia said, “in the nature of special education, there is not enough people to help you”, so she braved the year with little help from paraprofessionals because of staffing issues and lack of support from administration.
After all of this, Alexia ended up moving positions in the district, because that was the only way the administration knew how to help her in the situation that she was in.
With the struggles with her students and administration, it was necessary for Alexia find an effective coping mechanism.
She said, before this coping mechanism was found “[she] didn’t want to teach anymore, [she] wanted to be done after that year”.
She found this form of coping in starting her own business. She explained that because of the physicality in her classroom, she had to wear headbands, so she started making her own. She said, “I was finding a lot of joy in doing that, so I started selling them”. Eventually she developed this into a small business, and that was how she was able to cope with what she had to deal with at school.
