DOHA: An expatriate woman teacher of a boys’ school has accused a Grade 6 student of slapping her in public and poking her hand with a sharp-edged pencil several times.
The teacher has complained to the school administration that the incident was an assault on her dignity as a teacher. A news item posted on Al Sharq website yesterday quoted the teacher as saying she intervened when she found the student making obscene gestures to other students in the classroom.
She said when the student refused to listen, she called a female ‘social supervisor’ to handle the situation. The supervisor said she was busy and hence couldn’t come.
The teacher said she then grabbed the student’s hand and took him to the supervisor and it was then that the boy slapped her and poked her hand with a sharp pencil many times.
The teacher said she is in Qatar for 18 years teaching in schools and has been working in this particular school for four years. “This is the first time I have been assaulted and humiliated by a student,” she said.
“Never ever in my career I had been attacked and insulted like this,” said the teacher. According to her, the boy slapped her in the presence of the supervisor, several teachers and students.
The education sector regulator, Supreme Education Council (SEC), she said, always sides with students although incidents involving assaults on women teachers and insults by students, especially those in grades 1 to 6, have been on the rise in schools.
There always is pressure on teachers. Narrating the plight of expatriate women teachers, she hinted that concerns about their families leave them helpless in such situations.
The Peninsula
