‘I still have nightmares’: Safety concerns pushing local educators out the classroom

PITTSBURGH — As schools across western Pennsylvania fight to recruit and retain teachers, safety concerns are causing more teachers to plan their exit. It’s an issue that’s happening across the country.

11 Investigates previously surveyed thousands of teachers. The results painted a dire situation that could get worse before it gets better.

A local woman and former teacher says safety concerns and her mental health forced her to leave her dream career after less than two years leading a classroom. She shared her story for the first time with Channel 11.

“I just had a lot of anxiety even walking through the door. What’s going to happen to me today?” said Haley Hannan.

The stress of her job, teaching special needs students at a school in Allegheny County, turned into crippling anxiety. She even began to suffer panic attacks while on the job.

Hannan was fresh out of college, eager to become a good teacher and make a difference in students’ lives. Her teenage students were learning on an elementary level.

Hannan says as a special needs teacher, she was prepared for students to cause her physical pain. She said she was hit, punched and kicked regularly, but she knew many of her students had severe behavioral issues and others didn’t know they were hurting her.

But she was not prepared for the inappropriate behavior she says she experienced from an 18-year-old student. Over more than a year, she said the behavior grew more serious and concerning, only pausing when the school went remote for a few months during the pandemic.

Hannan says the student always wanted to hold her hand, then started calling her “Miss Haley girlfriend.”

“But that turned into kissing my hand. That turned into me saying we don’t kiss our teachers, but then he would grab my hand and squeeze really hard and do it anyway,” Hannan said. “Many times he would have his hands in his pants staring at me.”

She said she tried repeatedly, for months to get the student moved to another classroom, especially as his behavior seemed to escalate. She said her administrators failed to address her concerns and never moved the student.

“I brought it up. I asked, but I was told there were higher priorities,” she said.

She resigned in 2020, shortly after the school returned to in-person instruction, due to health concerns.

“I mean I suffered depression, anxiety, panic attacks. I had panic attacks at school in the bathroom. I still have nightmares… It’s still hard to talk about,” she said through tears.

“I’ll never go back. It’s just -- It hurts my heart because I had to leave those kids. They didn’t deserve it either,” Hannan said.

Shortly after leaving and realizing her teaching career was over, Hannan started writing. Her book “Listen” tells her story, minus the names of the school she taught at or the names of her students.

11 Investigates took the concerns Hannan raised, along with those raised by dozens of local teachers, to lawmakers.

State Senator Lindsey Williams said she is concerned Pennsylvania will not have enough qualified teachers to educate the next generation if something does not change.

Williams is the minority chair of the Senate Education Committee. She believes a dramatic investment in mental health is long overdue, for both students and educators.

“I worry about the new teachers that are just getting here and are seeing things at a crisis point. What are they going to do? How long are they going to stay?” Williams said. “I’ve had educators share with me that they have thought about suicide.”

Williams said she does not have the power as minority chair of the education committee to call a hearing on teacher violence but would support having one and hearing from local teachers who have been impacted.

In our survey of thousands of teachers, 59 percent said there are not enough resources to address violent behavior. That number was 63 percent among Pennsylvania teachers.

“We aren’t really putting our money where our mouth is in terms of addressing it,” said state representative Emily Kinkead. “We shouldn’t be just throwing money at the problem, but if we’re not supposed to throw money at the problem, how do we solve the problem? And nobody’s actually been able to answer that question.”

Former educators like Hannan say teachers need more support, especially from administrators, and schools need more resources. If that doesn’t happen, she believes more young teachers will leave local classrooms for the same reasons she did.

“It’s not okay, and I don’t want it to happen to anybody else,” Hannan.

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