Broward County school officials are investigating a teacher seen on video apparently jumping on and choking a student while hurling a string of expletives at the 11-year-old boy.
The incident occurred during a McNicol Middle School field trip just before Christmas to the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale. The unidentified teacher has been reassigned pending the investigation, according to news reports.
The 11-year-old student, Kendrick, acknowledged he had gotten into a fight during the field trip lunch with another student over a bag of chips. However, the two hug and made up before things got out of hand.
Initially, that’s all the information his mother, Yasmine Francois, was given. When Kendrick returned home with a three-day suspension, François confiscated his phone and threatened to return some of his Christmas gifts.
She was dubious when her son told her the teacher had gotten on top of him and grabbed his throat.
“I’m not the mom that’s gonna take sides with my son,” Francois told WSVN-7 in Miami. “Like, if you do something bad, you know, you do something bad. I’ll most likely side with the school before I side with you.”
But then a friend sent her the video, which showed a woman, identified by Kendrick as his teacher, pulling him onto a picnic bench and jumping on top of him.
Audio from the video captures what sounds like a slap. The woman can be heard cursing at the child.
“She was grabbing my throat. I couldn’t talk; I wanted to get her off me,” Kendrick told WSVN.
“She choked me and she slapped me,” said Kendrick added. “She was just cursing at me. It hurt a little bit, ’cause my throat felt spicy.”
He speculated the teacher may have thought he was returning to confront a fellow student he had fought with earlier.
“I’ve had a teacher yell at me, not curse at me, though,” said Kendrick. “I don’t think teachers should curse at kids, you know. I never had a teacher do that to me.”
Francois was outraged by the teacher’s behavior.
“You’re a teacher, and this is how you address your student? That’s the language? Is that the vocabulary you use to speak to a kid?” she said.
Francois said she feels misled by the school
“They told me what he did,” she said. “They didn’t tell me what they did to him.”
