
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 18, 1995                   TAG: 9509180043
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A=4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

READING, WRITING AND MURDER THREATS

NOT MUCH Spanish was taught, but the Kentucky high school teacher who took a former student to court for harassment got one thing across: There is a line that cannot be crossed in the classroom without paying a serious penalty. In this case, $33,700.

It will be difficult to collect, the kid's attorney says. His client is now a college student who has worked recently in a restaurant and as a landscaper. In which case the young man had better start slinging a lot of burgers, perhaps muttering with every flip: "I will not threaten other people. I will not threaten other people ... ''

Not that we think this is what he would be muttering, or expect that he has learned anything from the outcome of his actions. He is considering an appeal, and his attorney complains the poor boy is the victim of character assassination. All he had done - unrelentingly, for two years - was tell his Spanish teacher he wanted to murder her, working the threat into every sentence that he could in class. When she took him aside to ask why he kept saying this, he replied: "Probably because I do."

Oh, yeah. And, fearing that "the class will no longer be disruptive," he also wrote to a classmate after graduation that students should not be permitted to start doing their homework, and could still drive the teacher crazy.

He was joking, the lawyer says.

This was so funny, the teacher pressed criminal charges, and the student was sentenced in juvenile court to community service and put under a restraining order. The civil suit followed, and jurors were similarly not amused.

Not much will be learned, of course, if her success opens the door to more lawsuits: teachers suing belligerent, disruptive students in response to years of students' parents suing mean, old, nasty teachers, sometimes for trying to do what the parents themselves apparently have failed to do - teach respect.

Enough.

What should be noted by all is that the entire class was behind in its work as a result of this adolescent's appalling behavior. And while this case is unusually bizarre, many teachers have reason to feel vulnerable in classrooms that should be their domain. Almost 10 percent report in recent surveys that they have been attacked at school. Ninety-five percent of those attacks were by students.

Rather than watching the growth and entrenchment of adversarial relationships, tighter security measures and more frenzied litigation, it's time to get newly creative in allowing teachers the opportunity to focus on teaching. Students, for example, should be involved more in monitoring themselves.

It's also time to get back to the old-fashioned sort of teacher-parent alliances that left youngsters with no doubt about what was expected of them in the classroom. Children need to see more respect shown for their teachers, in class and at home.

by CNB