Video: Female HS student beats up 65-year-old teacher in hallway while crowd 'circled up' on them, hooting and hollering

Cellphone video caught a female student beating up a 65-year-old St. Louis high school teacher in a hallway Wednesday while a crowd "circled up" on the pair, hooting and hollering.

What are the details?

Video shows the student dragging the female science teacher on the floor at Normandy High School, KSDK-TV reported, adding that the teacher appeared to be trying to restrain the student as the student kicked and punched her.

According to the station, Greg Stanton — the teacher's significant other — said the teacher told police the student left class and returned to get her book bag. But when the teacher told the student to wait, the student pushed past the teacher, grabbed her book bag, and attacked the teacher, Stanton told KSDK.

The teacher was hospitalized after the altercation, the station said, adding that loved ones said the teacher is in pain but is expected to be OK.

“She's banged up pretty bad ... I'm at work, and I get this video ... She was circled up,” Stanton told KSDK.

It appears there are at least two cellphone videos of the altercation. One unredacted video shows the student hitting the teacher in the head with her hand nearly 20 times. When the pair was separated, a female dressed in an orange jacket — apparently another student — pushed the teacher back on the floor as the teacher lunged toward the student who had been beating her up.

Stanton added to the station that after the altercation, the teacher "really couldn’t talk. She don’t understand why. She was crying."

Police told KSDK that criminal charges against the student will be sought through St. Louis County Juvenile Courts.

What did the school district have to say?

Normandy Schools issued the following statement, the station reported:

The district is addressing an incident that occurred this morning involving a confrontation between a teacher and a student. The administration is taking this matter seriously and is fully cooperating with local law enforcement. Additionally, we have launched an internal investigation to gather all the necessary facts surrounding the incident, and appropriate actions will be taken based on the findings of these investigations. The safety and well-being of our students and staff are of the utmost importance to Normandy Schools Collaborative, and our primary focus is to provide a safe and nurturing space for students to learn and for teachers to educate.

'One of the most difficult jobs in the world'

"Teaching is one of the most difficult jobs in the world,” education consultant Ian Buchanan — a former Normandy Schools principal — told KSDK.

The station asked Buchanan, "What does a teacher do? Let's say hypothetically a student swings at you? What's the ideal response?”

Buchanan replied, “There are a number of techniques many that teachers have been trained to use and execute ... I think first is to resist that first reaction to [respond] in a defensive way … I definitely wouldn't want it to be an eye for an eye, so to speak, or a tit for a tat. At the same time, just in case you didn’t know, teachers are human beings. And so we can talk about all of this theory about [what's] supposed to happen, but when you’re confronted with those situations, who knows what might happen."

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