Philadelphia High School Teacher Badly Beaten by Students After Taking Away Their iPods

Pity the poor city of Philadelphia. Perhaps more to the point, pity the people who call it home. Philadelphia now holds the nasty distinction of having the highest number of homicides of any major city in the United States, per capita - yep, beating out New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, all of the other 'major players'. Who exactly was it that dubbed it as the "City of Brotherly Love"?

Last weekend, my youngest daughter and I headed into the city looking for a special occasion dress; we spent all of our time literally on Walnut Street, home to Coach, Anthropologie, Burberry, Urban Outfitters, Le Bec Fin - in short, some very fine retailers. At no point did it enter our minds to wander elsewhere. Even to suburbanites such as ourselves, you learn early on that going into certain parts of Philadelphia can be very, very dangerous. It sounds almost cliche to say 'What a pity' - but it's true. Is this 'cultural bias' on our part? No, not at all. If you're not familiar with a city, especially a 'big' city, one doesn't go rambling about it by foot or by car. Oddly enough, if you were, like us, to just spend your day (and you easily could) wandering the length of Walnut Street, you would come away with quite a different impression of the city of Brotherly Love than that of a hotbed for homicides. The street was populated for the most part by folks who could 'afford', literally, to be there: older matrons dressed in head to toe St. John, chic young couples, reed-thin in their designer clothing and shoes, suburban moms like myself with one or more daughters in tow bent on doing some damage to that platinum credit card...One would think that Philadelphia is a city like it perhaps once was - expensive, rather overly snooty, orderly in the social-class sense - instead of an urban setting that has been badly damaged by corrupt politics and little, if any, regard for the physical, financial and emotional well-being of its citizens.

Just how bad are things in Philadelphia? Let's examine a recent incident that took place in its inner city school system.

On February 23, 2007, Frank Burd, 60, was assaulted in a hallway of Philadelphia's Germantown High School by two male students aged fifteen and eighteen. Burd had been a teacher for twenty-four years and was extremely well-liked by both students and fellow faculty members for his easy-going manner, enthusiasm for teaching, and access and availability to students needing help both within and outside the classroom setting. He taught both mathematics and photography, directed school plays, and was a yearbook advisor and photographer. When I first heard of this story, Mr. Burd was pictured live on television; it was weeks after his attack, and he was literally finally able to leave the hospital - although months and months of physical, speech and occupational therapy will follow. On television, Burd looked extremely small: a short man who looked sixty or older, frizzy gray hair puffed up not unlike Kramer's, dressed much like you would expect a teacher to look. Tweed jacket, scarf wrapped twice around his neck, wiry, slightly crooked wire rimmed glassed. It was the expression on his face that struck me the most, though. He looked for all the world like a man who had no idea what planet he was on. He looked to be totally, helplessly out of his element. Perhaps it was all of the microphones stuck in his face; maybe it was the flash of cameras. Oh, and did I forget to mention that his neck was very firmly encased in one of those specialty medical thick neck braces, straps firmly in place under his chin? When I watched this apparently gentle soul trying to gain composure under the most difficult of circumstances for him, my heart sank in sorrow for him. He was drowning in a sea of despair and pain, pain inflicted upon him by one of his own students, and by a student he had never before met.

During that day in late February, Burd had asked student Donte Boykin, 18, to turn off and put away his IPod during an Algebra class. Actually, he asked Boykin more than twice. Burd then confiscated the device and left the classroom - with Boykin following him out into the hallway. Coward that he was, Boykin attacked Burd from behind, pushing him two or three times in the back. Fellow student James Footman, 15, happened to be loitering in that hallway when Burd was attacked. Footman did not know Boykin; he did not know Burd. But Footman punched Burd not once, but three times, pushing him into a locker and causing Burd to fall face first to the ground. Why was Footman in the wrong place at the wrong time? He was cutting class at Germantown High School. Following the beating, both youths fled the scene - which was filmed in its entirety on a surveillance camera in the hallway.

Burd does not recall his assault. He did, however, undergo several surgeries to pair the broken bones in his neck. Damage from his injuries kept him in a rehabilitation hospital for seven weeks, during which time his head was totally immobilized by that halo-like neck brace. His therapy sessions continue, and will for some time into the future - months, if not a year, at least. While he didn't sustain brain damage or physical paralysis, he is, unfortunately, 'paralyzed' with fear - fear of returning to the high school where he taught for over ten years, fear of driving a car, fear of someone in close physical proximity harming him. The teacher who loved to read, who loved to work through algebraic equations on the blackboard, now has concentration problems so severe that he can barely function without assistance. The one good thing that came out of this entire incident was that his fellow teachers, emboldened by the viciousness and mindlessness of the attack, came forward to the Philadelphia school board, documenting incidents of their own which had occurred to them on school grounds. Assaults in which books, bricks, hair brushes, even articles of clothing were reported, as were racial and feminist slurs and threats of bodily harm. The school board is currently reviewing its policy on in-school and on-campus assaults (some teachers reported being accosted in school parking lots) in an effort to revise the policy for stricter discipline to students. Two months after the assault took place, the Board has yet to act upon approving a stronger policy.

On April 26, 2007, Judge Kevin Dougherty sentenced Boykin to a private reform school. Footman was remanded to state custody. Both boys have open-ended sentences, which means that their case will be reviewed twice a year for up to four years, or until each turns 21. Footman was deemed by Doughtery to be "too violent" for incarceration in a reform school, instead placing him in a lock-down state facility; when asked during the sentencing phase why he attacked the teacher, Footman stated "I don't have no explanation". His public defender stated that his client was the product of a cocaine-addicted mother with no father figure present in the family, and that Footman had displayed violent tendencies since kindergarten. He also claimed that Footman was somewhat of a victim himself within the system, saying that he "was ignored (by school authorities) and he fell apart". Is that statement merely defense attorney rhetoric or is there something to another poor Philadelphia teenager falling through the cracks? And how many 'cracks' had he fallen through - the school system, the department of child welfare, social services? At what point do parents stand up and take responsibility for their own children?

Two students who fell through the cracks - not unlike a South Korean student at Virginia Tech whose behaviour for years also set off warning flares. Did Cho exhibit those same violent tendencies since kindergarten as well?

The implicit thought is that Burd, unlike the thirty-two massacred students at VTU, will recover and get on with his life. The question that begs an answer, however, is how much of a life will he be able to lead in the future? Burd is expected to under a myriad of therapies for nearly a year, and has expressed a very real fear of ever entering Germantown High School again. Is a shattered life better than none at all?