MOST VIOLENT JOBS IN ONTARIO
By Kirk Winter
If you were to do a street corner poll of the most violent jobs in Ontario, I suspect that many might answer policing or perhaps correctional services. If you did, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you perhaps might be very surprised at the other professions where on-the-job incidents of violence are spiralling out of control. Few would expect that elementary and secondary educational assistants and elementary and kindergarten teachers would be exposed to nearly the same or greater levels of violence than police and prison guards.
According to the Workplace Safety Insurance Bureau who collects data on “violent incidents resulting in lost time from work,” in 2019, the five most violent professions to be involved in were as follows:
Elementary and secondary educational assistants – 635 incidents reported
Correctional services – 345 incidents reported
Police officers – 322 incidents reported
Nurses aides and orderlies – 294 incidents reported
Elementary and kindergarten teachers – 261 incidents reported
Based on this data, the most dangerous workplace in Ontario is your local elementary and secondary school. These numbers should give you pause and cause you to wonder what is going on at our local schools.
For full disclosure, before I took up writing as a second career, I spent 31 years teaching at a large composite high school in rural Ontario. We serviced students of all differing abilities and I had the pleasure of working with some of the finest educational assistants in Ontario. They were compassionate, caring and invested in their students’ improvement and success. They dealt one-on-one with some of the most difficult-to-service children in our building, and did it while earning less than $40,000 a year.
In 1986, I was assigned my first “special class” with six very difficult-to-service students. Classes at the Basic Level were capped at six in recognition of the very high needs you would be dealing with and the EA ratio was one for every two students. There were four adults in that class at all times, and incidents that could have escalated into violent situations were snuffed out by proximity of adult supervision and an almost one-to-one adult-to-student ratio.
When I retired in 2015, that same class had 16 students with only one educational assistant. Every day was a challenge to put out fires before they started and ensure that both my EA and I did our best to keep students safe and secure from the depredations of their fellow classmates.
My school at its peak had over 50 EAs on staff. I am told there are now fewer than 10 in the building. While some of that can be explained by declining enrollment, most of the shrinkage was made to balance budgets where support staff were almost always the first to go.
Some educational assistants in TLDSB, Durham and Kawartha-Pine Ridge are now being issued with the same flak jacket worn by the Ontario Provincial Police, to protect them from their young charges who bite, kick, punch, spit and pull hair. EAs have been struck with books, staplers, chairs and hole punches used as projectiles by students as young as four. In a neighbouring board, an EA was pushed down multiple flights of stairs by a student under their care, and badly hurt. I know of at least one EA dealing with the aftereffects of post-concussion syndrome from being head-butted by a student she was working with. The EA in question will also need considerable dental work to repair the teeth chipped in that same incident. I have been told that classroom evacuations caused by overtly violent students are almost weekly occurrences at most schools in our part of Ontario.
This harsh and threatening work environment is also faced by elementary school teachers who share the schools with their educational assistants. Union officials have confirmed that on top of WSIB claims, paperwork for short-term and long-term disability is on the rise with classroom violence being one of the primary reasons for the disability claims being made by teaching staff.
One elementary teacher shared the following, “While inclusion of all different kinds of learners is a laudable goal, significant supports have to be put into place to ensure these students are successful, are not a threat to any other student or themselves. Those supports have been stripped away by successive provincial governments who have discovered the cost savings over the last 40 years of servicing these individuals in the educational system rather than the health care system.”
A frustrated, long-time EA said, “Many EAs work two jobs to make ends meet whether it be farming, evening respite or temp work as PSWs. They are not being hurt in those workplaces, so why should we have to risk our health and sanity going to school every day? When kids act out in serious ways they are not sent home because there is no one at home to supervise them. School is the only place these ticking time bombs can be and every day some of them are in the building is another day an educational worker can be injured. I fear it is going to take an educational worker being grievously injured before something is done to make schools safer.”
A local elementary teacher shared to social media, “When the police or correctional services people are threatened during the course of a workday, they are trained and equipped to defend themselves. We are not. Some of the Grade 7-8 students we are dealing with are six feet of hormonal fury. Somebody is going to have their career ended by one of these kids and then everyone will be wringing their hands and saying we didn’t see that coming. Anyone who will listen, from principals to the Premier. has been forewarned, but no one seems to care.”
An elementary teacher posted comments on-line, which sums up the frustration of those front-line educational workers who face violence every day. “The parents can’t deal with the kids so they are at school even when mentally they should not be. There are wait lists to see pediatricians, behavioural psychologists and psychiatrists that in some rural communities are years long. Principals have few options for behavioural modification as there is no one at home to supervise a suspension. Good kids cringe with fear waiting for the next chair to fly when little Johnny or Suzie has forgotten to take their medication. I have had my hair pulled in anger and frustration so many times that I cut it short to take that temptation away. I dare the Premier or Minister Lecce to spend a day in my class, and not return to Queen’s Park and vote millions towards supports that will help us deal with these difficult to service children.”
As parents and grandparents, we expect our schools to be safe for the children who attend them and the staff who work in them. Statistics are suggesting that this is no longer the case, and we as a society owe it to ourselves to ask questions of those in authority about what needs to be done to eradicate violence in our schools. It is the least we can do.