Jan 13, 2009 9:25 pm US/Eastern
Video Captures Teacher, Student Fight In Class
MINNEAPOLIS (CBS) ―
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On surveillance video from Dunwoody Academy, you can see the student walk up to the teacher and try to get it back. The teacher and the boy start yelling, the then teacher pushes the boy, and the fight gets bigger.
CBS
A school in Minneapolis might have just gotten a big, black eye of its own after surveillance video shows a fight in class last Friday between a 15-year-old student and a teacher.
"It's not, it's not right," said Nick Fredrickson, who was a volunteer at Dunwoody Academy in North Minneapolis where the fight happened.
He said he's seen students fight at the school, but he's never seen a teacher and a student fight.
"It means that our kids aren't safe. That they're not safe with their teachers," said Fredrickson.
Part of his job was to break up fights at the school. He wasn't there when this fight broke out after the teacher took away the boy's cell phone.
On the video, you can see the student walk up to the teacher and try to get it back. The teacher and the boy start yelling, the then teacher pushes the boy, and the fight gets bigger.
"You defend the teacher," asked CBS station WCCO-TV in Minneapolis' James Schugel.
"Absolutely. Absolutely," said Duane Dutrieuille, the Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at Dunwoody Academy.
He insists the teacher felt threatened and was really trying to defend himself. At one point in the video, you can see the boy end up on the table.
"The teacher was in the process of restraining the student and physically removing the student out of class," said Dutrieuille, who has watched the entire video.
There is a surveillance camera in all of the school's classrooms.
The worst part of the fight might come at the end, where Fredrickson said fists flew.
"As it zooms in, you see a teacher and a student physically swinging at each other, and it's in the corner. There are arms going up and contact between student and teacher," Fredrickson said.
The administrator said that is not the case.
"There was no showing, at all, of a teacher throwing a punch, whatsoever," Dutrieuille said.
He said that video does not tell the whole story of what happened. The student was angry and confrontational, and the teacher took his cell phone away because he was playing his music too loudly.
Dutrieuille said he's still deciding whether to suspend or even expel the student. The teacher is still teaching but might also be punished.
Fredrickson said the student was shaken up, and the teacher got a concussion. He just wants parents to know what happened.
"I have kids that are concerned about it today that are talking to me, parents that are calling me saying, 'Do you know what happened,'" Fredrickson said.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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