Student aggression rose as kids adjusted to in-person learning

Teachers and educational assistants have been faced with many challenges over the past few years; with the pandemic, strikes and staffing shortages they now face a new issue, higher levels of student aggression. 

Schools in Waterloo region are seeing higher student enrolment, the return of in-class learning and with that more incidents of aggressive behaviour towards teachers and staff.

According to a report presented at the Dec. 19 Waterloo Region District School Board meeting, from Sept. 1, 2022 to Nov. 15, 2022 there has been a total of 677 reported incidents of student aggression.

Incidents have increased by 167 from the same period last year. The school board predicts the trend in the increase of numbers will continue to climb as the school year progresses. 

Associate director for the school board, Graham Shantz, said there are two contributing factors to this increase in aggressive behavior; higher enrolment and students entering the school system for the first time. 

“We have a large number of students who were not in our buildings the last couple of years and as they are acclimatizing, some have never been in the school system before,” Shantz told trustees. 

He points to the pandemic playing a part in the upward trend.

Since students have been out of the classroom for the past few years they are finding it difficult to adjust to life back in the school system, he said. 

The lack of in-person learning mixed with the new wave of students coming into kindergarten and lower grades are making up for most of the incidents. The teachers and staff experiencing the most incidents are elementary educational assistants and elementary teachers, accounting for 86 per cent of all cases. 

There are four different types of incidents that vary in severity: hazard, first-aid, health-care and time off. Hazard incidents are where no injuries are reported or near misses occur. First-aid will have staff applying minor first aid measures like cleaning minor cuts, scrapes or scratches. 

Health-care will see staff sustaining an injury that requires medical aid from an external health care practitioner and time-off incidents will have the staff member having to take time off due to the injury sustained from the student. 

Shantz recommends comparing the data to the years prior to the pandemic for an accurate representation. 

“When looking at the data from 2019-2020 to this year, we do see the overall number of incidents go down a bit so that is a positive trend we’ve seen,” Shantz said. “We have seen our lost-time go up, which is a relatively small number that can fluctuate.” 

The number of lost-time incidents have increased from 8 in 2019-2020 to 15 this year. Even with this comparison, they still predict the number of incidents to surpass those pre-pandemic. 

The school board admits while it is difficult to know what will happen, they have proposed a number of proactive steps to help reduce the severity of incidents over the coming years. 

WRDSB has a growing Behavioural Management Systems team (BMS) that will provide support to schools and students. They will look to increase training for student containment and specific intervention methods. They will also proactively identify schools and individuals that might require extra support from BMS. 

“We continue to be proactive in utilizing our BMS team to support staff and administration,” said WRDSB in the report. 

“There are some factors that we need to continue to monitor and it is something that both staff and our joint health and safety committee are looking at very closely,” said Shantz. “We’re at a point of supporting those students as they climatize into our school system.”