I had a student sexually assault me in the middle of the hallway during dismissal. This same student tried to choke me the week prior; they had their hands around my neck and over my mouth and was trying to kill me. How do I know? Well a few days prior to that they ran up to me screaming “kill you!”
They were physically violent to me and to the other girls in the classroom, including the lead teacher (I was a yr long volunteer). The hardest part was knowing the child did not understand their actions, as they are on the autism spectrum. It was tough to deal with all the issues of violence and assault because 1) how can you punish someone for something they don’t understand yet? 2) it’s not moral to remove them from the classroom to place them in a separate room where they’d be missing out on bonding with the other students. It was a dilema. The problems were made worse by parents who did not try ti assist even after explaining the situation.
I got out of that classroom and that school as fast as I could.