Two female graduate teachers came to blows last week in the staff room of the Dr. JP Eustace Memorial Secondary School – an incident a Ministry of Education official has called “a sad day for the teaching profession.”{{more}}

SEARCHLIGHT understands that one teacher is on 10 days sick leave nursing a damaged eye, among other injuries, while the other has been instructed to take leave while the matter is being investigated.

The incident reportedly happened on Thursday, 30th October, and left the teachers present shocked at the behaviour of the two, both of whom are teacher-trained and teach at the CSEC level.

Information reaching SEARCHLIGHT indicates that blouses were torn and punches thrown in what another educator described as an embarrassment to the education system and the teaching profession.

When SEARCHLIGHT contacted Deputy Chief Education Officer Luis de Shong, he expressed the Ministry’s disappointment over the incident and said that a thorough investigation has been launched.

“That was a painful demonstration of unprofessional conduct,” de Shong told SEARCHLIGHT.

Meanwhile, President of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Teachers’ Union (SVGTU), Joy Matthews, said that she, too, is disappointed over the incident.

Matthews told SEARCHLIGHT that she has yet to receive a detailed report about the incident, but she knows enough to know that it is a sad state of affairs.

“It is sad to see teachers resort to violence to settle differences. We should be setting the example to students,” she said.

Matthews said that she plans to liaise with the Ministry of Education to get to the bottom of the issue, and expects that the two teachers involved, both union members, will report to her about the incident.

At press time she had spoken to one of the women, and she believes that the other had been trying to reach her.

“At a time when we are making every conceivable effort to address the general attitude of students, their overall conduct, we now have to confront this deplorable, unbecoming, inappropriate conduct of teachers who really ought to be role models,” deShong lamented, and questioned: “what is really happening in the teaching profession?” (KJ)