Violence in the classroom is a daily occurrence for most teachers, and it needs to be dealt with, according to the President of the New Brunswick Teachers Association.
George Daley says, “Some of the violence is a result of behaviours of special needs students, and some of it is behaviour of students that are not in the special needs category. These are fundamental things that are affecting our teachers on a regular basis,” Daley says.
He feels they need changes to the inclusive education policy, “I’m still hearing the concerns of teachers who are saying, because of the mix of students in the classroom that there’s no way possible they can meet all of the demands in front of them every single day. For a person who goes into education because they want to make things better in the world, when they go home on a daily basis feeling defeated, it wears on them after awhile.”
Daley says they’ve raised concerns to the province about the need for more psychologists and also for mental health access, but the difficulty for the government is how are they going to find the funds to do it. He says, it is going to take money.
“We’ve highlighted our concerns, and the areas we needs fixed. The areas that we need to have more resources in and the areas we need more training as well as the areas we just need to have more people in the system to deal with what we are dealing with,”Daley says.
