Teacher Beating Video Taped, Posted On Myspace

A video taped attack on a teacher by a 10th grade teen girl in Baltimore, Maryland was caught by a cellphone of a fellow student.

After an art teacher named Jolita Berry at Reginald F. Lewis High School in Baltimore told a student to sit down, she would have never thought this very same student would be attacking her in the next few minutes. Yes this attack takes a similar spin such as the recent news of the 6 Florida girls who video taped beating a fellow student, but more yet this video was of a student beating a fellow teacher.

Apparently the student didn’t want to abide by Berry’s request and instead began hitting her repeatedly as some of the students cheered. Berry was struck several times in the head and face while the student straddled her while she tried to defend herself.

One student happened to whip out their camera phone and recorded the incident which is only a glimpse of what occurred before the teacher ended up on the floor. A few teachers did happen to break up the fight, but when Berry went to the principal about the incident, she was shocked by the principal’s response.

“On one hand, she told me that she is sorry that this happened to me. But then she turned right around and told me that telling a student that I was going to defend myself was a trigger word. I triggered them,” stated Berry.

Possibly, it is of good fortune that the video ended online, which helped shed the light on the incident which may have been taken more lightly if gone unknown to the public as there has been reports that these kind of incidents have occurred multiple times before. There were about 500 assaults on teachers and staff at Baltimore schools last year, although they represent a variety of incidents, according to an article published on the Baltimore Sun.

In Berry’s case, the principal didn’t report the incident to the police. Mayor Sheila Dixon commented on the principal by stating, “I think that principal might need to be disciplined, because no teacher should be disrespected in the classroom.”

Currently there has been no mention of whether or not the 10th grade girl, the attacker has been brought up on criminal charges. However there are reports that the student, which attacked Berry, was suspended and could face an expulsion or transfer to another school.