Teachers are divided on returning to school after attack – 05/11/2023 – Education

In April, when Brazil registered a wave of threats against schools, two teachers from Aracruz (ES) turned off the televisions at home and spent days avoiding social networks. What for the rest of the country aroused the fear of possible violence, for them it is a reality from which they still suffer the physical and psychological consequences and which prevents them from returning to the classroom.

On the morning of November 25, Aristênia Mancini Martim, 51, was in the teachers’ lounge with her colleagues when she was shot 14 times by a former student. A few minutes later, Juliana Pessotti Ribeiro, 43, was teaching at a neighboring school when she heard the shots from a firearm that hit her daughter Thaís, 14, who was studying in the same unit.

The two teachers were victims of an attack by a 16-year-old teenager. The boy first invaded the Primo Bitti state school, where he killed three teachers and injured eight others. He then drove his father’s car one kilometer to Centro Educacional Praia de Coqueiro, a private school, and killed one female student and injured two others. The two units are in Aracruz.

“I hear about attacks or threats and I start to cry. My life turned upside down after that day. It is not possible that the country has not mobilized to prevent other teachers and students from going through what I am going through”, says Aristênia.

She spent a month in hospital recovering from surgery after being shot – two bullets are still lodged in her body. She was able to walk again just a few weeks ago and is still on sick leave.

A Portuguese teacher for 30 years, Aristênia can’t even think about going back to the classroom. She says she feels uncomfortable and wants to cry just when she picks up her school books or tries to write.

“I joke that I was born a teacher, when I was little I taught my dolls. Now, I can’t even think about entering a school without feeling a lump in my throat. That boy didn’t manage to take my life, but he took my life away from me. my profession, my dream.”

Aristênia was the teacher of the perpetrator for a few months, before he dropped out of school. She was also a friend and worked for 20 years with the teenager’s mother at Primo Bitti. “I knew that boy, his family. I had a huge affection for him. I cannot understand how he was capable of doing that, of hurting and taking the lives of those who cared about him”, she says.

“My fear of going back to the classroom now is thinking that, just like him, there may be other students who need psychological treatment and nobody noticed, not even the parents. I can’t go back and be a teacher who will be afraid of the students, not being able to be affectionate with them as I always was.”

Juliana, who teaches classes in the early years of elementary school, wants to go back to teaching after being encouraged by her daughter.

“The other day, she went to my locker, took the uniform blouse I wore at school and made a sign for me to wear it. She can’t wait for all of us to get back to our routine, get our lives back”, says Juliana.

After four months in hospital and several surgeries, Thaís returned home in April. She was hit in the head by a bullet and is starting to regain movement and speech.

Thaís started studying at the Praia de Coqueiro Educational Center last year, when her mother was hired to teach at the unit.

“In the beginning of the year [passado], she cried a lot because she did poorly in the first exams. Then she started studying harder and was getting the best grades in the class. She is studious, intelligent, loves going to school,” says Almir da Silva, 47, the girl’s father.

Without having regained her speech, Thaís showed photos of her school and her colleagues when asked by the Sheet about what you miss the most.

“Seeing that she has such a great desire to go back to school, even after that nightmare happened, gives me a lot of strength and courage to continue teaching”, says the mother.

As Thaís is yet to undergo rehabilitation treatment at a specialized hospital in Salvador (BA), Juliana is still on leave from school.

Even though she feels encouraged to return, she says she is scared by the naturalization of violence within schools. For her, the increase in attacks registered in Brazil shows how parents need to pay more attention to their children’s behavior and be more partners with teachers.

“Violence became natural within the school, parents don’t care when their children are disrespectful to teachers and classmates. We’ve been experiencing these aggressions for a long time and now they’ve escalated to this horror. I hope that, later seeing this extreme situation, everyone realizes that they are responsible for combating violence.”