FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) – An 11-year-old boy is speaking out and sharing his side of the story, days after he was recorded on cellphone video being restrained by a teacher during a field trip in downtown Fort Lauderdale — actions that the student’s mother said crossed the line.
“Don’t play with me!” the teacher is heard telling the student in the cellphone video as she got on top of the boy on a picnic bench at the Museum of Discovery and Science.
That boy, Kendrick, spoke with 7News on Friday.
“She was grabbing my throat. I couldn’t talk; I wanted to get her off me,” he said.
Kendrick, a sixth grader at McNicol Middle School in Hollywood, said the woman in the video is a teacher at the school.
Just before Christmas break, the students visited the museum on a field trip.
At lunch, Kendrick said, he and another boy got into a fight over a bag of chips and were separated by another adult.
“Yeah, we said sorry to each other, and then we hugged it out after,” he said.
But then, Kendrick said, the teacher lunged at him.
The video shows the woman pulling the boy onto the bench and jumping on top of him. She is seen holding a cellphone close to the 11-year-old’s face, and audio from the recoding captures what sounds like a slap.
“She choked me and she slapped me,” said Kendrick. “She was just cursing at me. It hurt a little bit, ’cause my throat felt spicy.”
Kendrick thinks the teacher might have believed he was walking back to the other boy, even though the initial fight was over.
Kendrick’s mother, Yasmine François, spoke with 7News on Thursday.
“I was at work. I was receiving phone calls saying that Kendrick got into a fight,” she said.
François said she took away Kendrick’s phone and prepared to scale back his Christmas. Then a friend sent her the video.
The concerned mother said she couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing.
“You’re a teacher, and this is how you address your student? That’s the language? Is that the vocabulary you use to speak to a kid?” she said. “”I’m not the mom that’s gonna take sides with my son. Like, if you do something bad, you know, you do something bad, so I’m highly disappointed, because I feel like I was misled.”
“I’ve had a teacher yell at me, not curse at me, though,” said Kendrick. “I don’t think teachers should curse at kids, you know. I never had a teacher do that to me.”
Friday afternoon, Broward County Public Schools spokesperson John Sullivan released the following statement:
“Upon learning of the video, the district is thoroughly investigating the matter. The employee involved is not scheduled to return to work until January 6th and has no contact with students.”
School district officials reiterated that they’re in the very early stages of this invesitgation, adding that the principal of McMillan Middle called François and told her that she had no idea that this had even happened.
Kendrick is facing a three-day suspension after the fight. His family is trying to figure out how he is going to feel better about going back to school.
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