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Later in the year, another brawl erupted in her classroom. But this time, the teacher couldn’t break it up. Caught in the middle of flying fists, she took a blow to the head. “I was screaming at the top of my lungs,” she said. “Thank goodness the hall monitor was within earshot.”

Now, days before students return and unsatisfied with the administration’s response to classroom violence, the teacher is wary of what the coming months might bring.

“I’m bracing for a storm,” she said. “I don’t feel that I was protected. I don’t feel that students were disciplined to the point where they understood that their actions were wrong. I don’t think they were given tools to improve.”

After a tumultuous year that saw some Toronto-area schools reach a crisis point, beset by fights and disorder, some teachers fear a repeat, saying their bosses have yet to take this problem seriously.

Besides impacting academic achievement, educators and experts also say a persistent shortage of staff and other resources, like social workers and mental health supports, has made maintaining order in schools even more difficult.

Teachers soon after students — their by social isolation, increased screen time and other ramifications of the pandemic — resumed in-person learning.

In May, the TDSB revealed that 323 students had been involved in violent incidences on school premises so far that academic year. Though a small fraction of the entire student population — which has fallen since the beginning of the pandemic and now sits around 235,000 — the number was the highest in several years, and on track to be the highest since the board started collecting data in 2000.

(According to the board, a violent incident possessing a weapon, physical assault that results in medical attention, sexual assault, robbery, threatening with a weapon, extortion and hate-motivated incidents. The TDSB told the Star it doesn’t keep track of the number of violent incidences overall.)

Against this backdrop, several high-profile bursts of violence, including two fatal shootings at pc28����high schools in 2022, put parents, educators and students even further on edge.

“What we’re seeing here is the whole system in stress,” said Todd Cunningham, chair of the University of Toronto’s School and Clinical Child Psychology Program. “We haven’t actually dealt with a lot of the mental health-related issues that were caused during the pandemic.”

Nor do schools have enough resources to adequately respond, he added, about double the percentage in 2011.

But declining mental health, along with learning gaps compounded by the pandemic, are just a couple factors behind increasing disorder at school, according to Cunningham. The government hasn’t provided teachers with enough supports or tackled large class sizes, he said.

“It is really a bit of a perfect storm right now.”

Ralph Nigro, president of the Ontario Principals’ Council, stressed the impact of staffing shortages around the province that have left teachers overworked and principals, who he said are already concerned about rising violence, worried they can’t always provide adequate supervision.

School boards have tried their best to address the problem, added Nigro, including the TDSB, which last year redeployed staff and hired hundreds more occasional teachers to plug holes exacerbated by teacher burnout. But he said it hasn’t been enough.

When people ask him if public schools are safe, he tells them, “they’re as safe as they can be under the current situation and with the current level of resourcing that our principals and vice principals have.”

The provincial government pushed back against the notion that schools are underfunded.

“We are investing nearly $700 million in additional funding, which includes $24 million on school safety,” said Grace Lee, a spokesperson for Ontario Minister of Education Stephen Lecce.

The Ford government is currently in labour negotiations with Ontario’s four main teacher unions, whose members have been without contracts since last August.

Along with the $24 million announced in April, another $16 million from the Safe and Clean Schools Supplement will go toward supporting the salaries and benefits of psychologists, social workers, youth workers and educational assistants.

The province’s education budget for this coming school year is projected at $27 billion, which the government noted is the largest in Ontario’s history.

But the secondary school teacher in Etobicoke also lamented the teacher shortage, saying it has disrupted learning and overtaxed staff. Meanwhile, a lack of social workers and guidance counsellors has only contributed to challenges in the classroom, she added.

For many struggling students, “we don’t have the resources to help them,” she continued, noting teachers must contend with the popularity of fight videos on social media and everything else that goes on beyond the school’s halls.

Every person the Star interviewed, including this teacher, mentioned the importance of extracurricular programming — both at school and in the broader community — in reaching these students, many of whom suffered greatly during the pandemic when these programs were shuttered.

The teacher in Etobicoke doesn’t believe her school’s response to student violence and misbehaviour helps. After the fights in her classroom, she said there was little followup about how future incidents could be prevented, nor was the violence formally raised with other teachers to ensure they were aware of the situation.

“Nothing is communicated, and it’s all because the admin wants to hush all of these incidents because it looks bad,” the teacher claimed. She believes administrators at her school have become “quite soft” in disciplining children at the behest of the TDSB.

When the Star reached out for a response to the teacher’s assertion, a spokesperson for the TDSB answered with a list of incidents specified in the that prompt an immediate suspension and possible expulsion, including possessing or using a weapon, assault, and selling drugs, among other offences.

In December, the TDSB revealed the first phase of a new plan to address school violence, which has been underway for months and includes more training for staff; working with community partners to develop programming for kids; placing more safety monitors, youth counsellors and social workers in select schools; updating video surveillance across schools; and the creation of an expert panel that will make recommendations.

The TDSB spokesperson said the second phase of its plan had not been released because the board continues to work through its initial efforts.

A veteran teacher at Tomken Road Middle School in Mississauga told the Star they believe the Peel District School Board (PDSB) also favours optics over concrete steps to address safety, such as, in their view, toughening discipline. The teacher pointed to a .

In May, an anonymous letter that appeared to be written by a Tomken staff member, alleged that students and staff at the school face “countless unsafe interactions on a daily basis.” The letter went on to list several examples of purported “disorderly conduct,” including theft, threats, violence and smearing feces on bathroom walls.

The veteran teacher at Tomken corroborated the allegations made in the letter.

“I’m honestly terrified to go back to teaching,” said the veteran teacher, who the Star is not naming to protect them from reprisals for speaking to the media. “Nothing has been done in terms of helping the kids behave better ... It’s all about what the board looks like. Image, image, image. It has nothing to do with the best interest of the kids.”

When reached for comment, the PDSB said in a statement that it had offered “a variety of board resources to support a number of our schools toward their efforts to engage in strategies and approaches, such as restorative practices and bullying prevention.”

In September, the board said students will receive “learning experiences that outline expectations for self-regulation, anti-bullying and anti-vaping” and staff will offer “spaces and lessons for co-constructing a shared understanding of values and creating a sense of community, belonging and well-being.”

While both teachers would like to see their schools enforce stricter consequences on students, Cunningham, the psychologist and UofT professor, casts doubt on the effectiveness of harsh punishment. “Suspending kids does not change behaviours,” he insisted.

He lauded the province’s recent decision to boost mental health literacy for certain grades but said access to in-person, mental health supports must be expanded, along with other learning resources.

“It can’t just be on a classroom teacher to figure it out on their own,” he said.

For the teacher in Etobicoke, it all begins with parents, many of whom she knows are already struggling to provide for their family, making it even harder to become deeply involved in their children’s development.

Neela Ethayakanthan, a student at Weston Collegiate Institute and former member of the TDSB student senate, also believes schools could do more to engage parents, especially, she said, those who are new to the country.

In February, Ethayakanthan’s own school was rocked by violence when a 15-year-old in the parking lot was shot three times in the chest during a drive-by shooting.

Sending out letters doesn’t do the trick, continued Ethayakanthan, who’s entering Grade 11. She’d like to see schools organize more parent-focused events, on top of prioritizing regular, direct contact with parents.

“If parents connect with schools and they’re able to support us, it definitely boosts students and our mental health because (school)’s just a lot to take.”