A teacher at a high school in Texas is no longer in the classroom after a video surfaced of him allegedly hitting a student with a belt, school district officials said.
The unidentified teacher at Cypress Woods High School in Cypress was seen taking off his belt and chasing a student around the classroom before hitting him with it in a video taken during class on Friday. Students told KTRK that the student spat on the teacher and then wiped something off his head, prompting the teacher – whose online biography said he previously worked in the English department at the school – to react.
School officials said in a statement that they were “shocked” by the conduct seen in the video.
“The staff member involved was immediately removed from campus and [school district] police are conducting a thorough investigation,” according to the statement released by the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District. “These actions are certainly not representative of Cypress Woods or CFISD employee standards of conduct.”
The teacher declined comment when reached by a reporter at his home in Harris County, KTRK reports.
Messages seeking additional comment from district officials were not immediately returned Tuesday.
But at least one student at the school claimed the incident was drastically misinterpreted, claiming the teacher and student frequently played around during class.
“The teacher wasn’t hitting the student to actually hurt him or teach him a lesson,” student Taylor Johnson wrote. “If you’ve watched the video, you’ll notice that the video is muted, clearly so you can’t hear that this is all fun and games. The teacher and student had a funny relationship where they would always mess with each other and joke around. The teacher didn’t hurt the student and everyone in the class could testify, I’m sure.”
KTRK did not identify the teacher since he had not been charged with a crime, but grainy footage apparently taken by another student inside the classroom showed a male teacher chasing a student around a classroom after the teen wiped something off the educator’s head.
Sherry Lopez, who has two daughters at the school, said the teacher had other options instead of reacting the way he did, regardless of the circumstances leading up to the incident.
“It would definitely be a problem,” Lopez said a teacher reacted that way toward her daughters. “He could have called his parents. There were other measures he could have took.”