A Head Start teacher in the Youngstown, Ohio school district has been fired after a video appeared that showed her abusing a student. People think automatically that when someone becomes a teacher it is for altruistic reasons but that’s not always true. A friend of mine who is a guidance counselor at a college in New York told me that when students struggle in other curriculum, they are told that getting a degree in education is much easier to get and so people wanting to be engineers end up becoming teachers and perhaps some of them are bitter about it.
Jenn Lohr, the teacher was seen dragging a very young student down the hall by the arm. After being fired she told an interviewer that the child had a history of problems. I fail to see how that justifies child abuse. Evidently, her bosses saw it the same way.
The teacher in last week’s incident has been fired by Alta Head Start, and Mahoning County Children Services said it has initiated an investigation into the incident, according to The (Youngstown) Vindicator newspaper.
The photo was taken by a Youngstown City Schools teacher working in administration. It shows a woman walking down a school hallway dragging a 4-year-old boy by the arm. It’s unclear what led the teacher to drag the student.
The teacher, Jenn Lohr, told The Vindicator that the student in the photo had a history of “unfortunate emotional issues and anger issues” since he started preschool at Programs of Promise at Wilson school.
She said the environment at the Wilson school is “volatile.”
The boy’s mother has hired the Youngstown law firm of Betras, Kopp, and Harshman, according to WKBN-TV.
Denise Dick, a Youngstown Schools spokeswoman, told The Vindicator that the district will end its collaboration with Alta after this year. She said the decision was unrelated to the incident with the teacher.
Dantheman