HOMESTEAD, FLA. (WSVN) - A substitute teacher has been suspended after cellphone video from a classroom inside Homestead Middle School captured a fight between the teacher and a student.
The mother of the 14-year-old student involved in the fight spoke to 7News on condition of anonymity, Tuesday.
“Why he supposed to touch my son like that? I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
The mother said her son was violently taken to the floor in the middle of class after he requested to leave the room to meet her in the office on Oct. 7.
“He was like, ‘No, no, mom. I didn’t do nothing wrong,'” she said.
The student told his mother the scuffle began after he asked to go to the school’s office to be picked up because he wasn’t feeling well, but a heated exchange erupted in front of the class.
“He’s like, ‘I need to go to the office,'” she said. “He’s like, ‘You’re not going nowhere,’ and then he grabbed him, and this happened.”
The mother said her son was put in a head lock, which left him with swollen eyes and marks on his neck.
“He turned him by his back down,” she explained.
A student in the video could be heard saying, “Let him go” while ushering another student to grab the substitute teacher and separate the two.
It’s unclear what took place before the video started.
The 14-year-old returned to school a couple of days after the scuffle, and the substitute is off the job for now.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools released a statement that read in part, “We are conducting a thorough review of this incident. The temporary instructor will not be placed at any school pending the outcome of the investigation.”
Parents outside the school reacted to the video, Wednesday.
“Under any circumstance, no staff, personnel, nobody should put their hands on children,” a mother said. “I’ll go crazy if somebody put their hands on my child.”
“Even if the child was disrespectful — or whatever the case is since we don’t know what the case was — there’s still other protocols,” another mother added.
The mother said her son is shy and has no history of anger issues, but she believes the substitute might have some and wants him off the job for good.
“I would not like him to be teaching or be a teacher when he has issues,” she said. “He could do worse to someone else.”
The substitute teacher has been working for Miami-Dade County since February 2018 and has no history with the district of being disciplined.
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