Assaults on School Teachers

I recently was a speaker at the Missouri Association of School Librarians annual convention on the topic of "Everyday Personal Safety". This is a timely topic for educators since the US Dept of Education surveyed 3.7 million teachers and found that on average 4% of public school teachers are physically assaulted and an additional 7% are threatened with violence each year! These statistics would indicate that every educator should have some basic self-defense/personal safety training. Unfortunately most schools do not provide that type of training for their teachers.