I looked at his sorrowful, frightened brown eyes, and I thought about what a hard-working, cooperative kid he had been all season long. I shuddered as he shared numerous horrific tales he'd experienced. As he quietly told me about the time he was shoved down a flight of stairs by two of his classmates, only to go home and get beaten up by his father for getting blood and dirt on his new shirt, I ached inside. It suddenly occurred to me that this boy had no safe haven to retreat to because both his school and his home had become scary, unsafe domains. Somehow he managed to muddle through his weeks with little more than the support he got from me during practice each day.
Statistics reflect the change, too.
I never encountered any violence when I attended that middle school ten years earlier. And while I'm sure there were kids who ten, fifteen, and even twenty years ago endured similar experiences to Billy's, we, as educators, cannot ignore the proliferation of school violence in children's lives these days. I'm sure the answer was multi-dimensional, and there were probably a dozen incidents that fueled Billy's decision to resort to such extreme measures. There may have also been subconscious fears that he had yet to come to terms with. There are so many Billys in the world, and as educators we encounter them on a daily basis whether or not we're aware of it.