North Texas school employee injured while trying to avoid chair thrown by student
An employee at a Corsicana school was injured in a fall Tuesday while trying to avoid a chair that a student threw at her, district officials said.
Carol Tidwell, a teacher’s aide at Collins Intermediate School, told KDFW-TV that she broke her wrist in the Jan. 21 incident. She is the second employee from that school to be injured during an interaction with a student in the past five months.
The paraprofessional was assigned to a classroom for students with behavioral challenges. That day a student who had previously been disruptive in the classroom began to act out again, KDFW reported.
“When I looked up, all I could see was a chair coming,” Tidwell said to KDFW.
Tidwell said she stumbled backwards and tripped, KDFW reported.
Her husband confirmed in a public social media post that Tidwell “got hurt at her job,” and he took her to the emergency room at Baylor University Medical Center.
The Corsicana ISD Police Department has completed its investigation into the incident, district officials said in a statement Wednesday, Jan. 22. Video footage shows the teacher’s aide was injured during the fall.
“In a small classroom, a student attempted to throw a chair in the direction of a paraprofessional, who fell attempting to avoid the chair as it slid across the floor,” the statement reads.
Candra Rogers, an assistant principal at Collins Intermediate School, was injured in August when a student threw a wooden hanger at her. The hanger hit Rogers in the right eye, and knocked her eye out of the socket, she said.
Rogers permanently lost her sight in that eye, and on Jan. 14 she had it surgically removed, KWTX-TV reported.
Shortly after she was injured, Rogers told reporters that what happened to her should never happen to another educator. She believes Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code, which deals with student discipline, “may need to be reevaluated” to “address the mental, social and emotional well-being of these students.”
“We care about students and their safety,” Rogers said. “But we must also care about the safety of our educational staff. Our safety is important, too. We should never have to fear being in a classroom with an aggressive student.”
