Teaching ate me alive

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

24. I once deposed a teacher who had filed for workers comp in California

It was a pure stress or "psyche" case without physical injury, the type of work injury case that's strongly contested by insurance companies and rarely successful. After two days of deposition, I called the adjuster and suggested she consider picking up the claim. I was almost in shock to hear of the terrible environment in which the teacher had had to work. He had broken up a fight on a bus between two middle school classmates. One of the boys told his father that the teacher pushed him off and kept him from beating the crap out of another boy who had offended him. The parents got very upset when the school refused to fire the teacher. The father was a gang member and began hounding the teacher, waiting for him in the school parking lot with other gang members in his car, brandishing assault rifles out the window, and nearly running him over. The teacher was physically attacked by the boy's mother, also a gang member, inside his classroom at the end of the day. He was constantly receiving threatening phone calls at night. There was two days' worth of incidents involving these parents described by the teacher that blew my mind. The school administrator did nothing and was afraid for his own life. The police did nothing, as no one was brave enough to back up the teacher's story as a witness.