Violence and harassment against Manitoba teachers on the rise, survey suggests

Violence and harassment against teachers in Manitoba schools appear to be on the rise, according to a new survey conducted by a Manitoba educator.

“Definitely the big message is, it’s happening in our schools, the violence and harassment is happening,” said Julie Braaksma, a teacher and researcher.

The survey, conducted as part of Braaksma’s PhD thesis, gathered responses from 191 teachers across 22 public school divisions during the 2023–2024 school year. According to the findings, 54 per cent of respondents reported being threatened or injured with physical force at least once during the school year, while 15 per cent said they experienced more than 20 violent incidents over the 10-month period.

Braaksma, a certified teacher in Manitoba since 2011, said the research aims to fill a gap in publicly available Canadian data on violence in schools.

“Further research sort of said, there isn’t a lot of this in Canada. I found some research in Ontario and British Columbia, but pretty much everything else was done within the local or provincial unions and sort of kept quietly, there hadn’t been a lot published, so this was an opportunity to do that,” she said.

The survey also suggests the impact on teachers’ well-being is significant. A third of affected teachers reported taking time off work to recover, while more than half said they experienced medium to high levels of burnout.

Braaksma said the issue is not isolated to one school or division.

“I’ve been involved in many — a few division school divisions both in Saskatchewan and Manitoba so, I can’t say this is isolated to any one school or school division, it’s happened to me at various places where I have been hit, kicked, bit, spot on. I’ve ended up with bruised ribs, bruising, scratches, so like it’s happening to me and I’ve seen it happen to other staff as well, whether it’s teachers or educational assistance has been happening,” she said.

According to the survey results, students were most likely to make threats or commit violent acts against teachers. Parents were identified as the most common source of harassment, including verbal insults and intimidating emails.

Braaksma is encouraging educators to follow school division policies that require all incidents to be reported, stressing the need to address the issue systemically.

“Really what I wanted to bring forth is that message that this is happening in our schools and that we need to start looking at it as a systemic issue that needs to be worked on. Will it be corrected overnight? No, but I wanna have this so that we can start the conversation that staff who do report violent incidents or incidents of harassment are not swept under the rug or not blamed for doing this and so this is a way to start the research that says yes, it is happening in Manitoba, in our schools. Now what? is sort of the next question of we’re gonna look at or we should be looking at why is this happening and what can we do about it?” she said.