Jennifer Timmins says she often comes home from work with bruises, cuts or scratches that are hard to explain to her three children.
Timmins works as an educational assistant (EA) at a public school in inner-city Hamilton, a job that goes beyond helping students with their work. She says she often finds herself breaking up fights and managing students with aggressive behaviour, subjecting herself to violence that nearly any other worker would find unconscionable – and she wants it to stop.
“Every day I go in thinking, ‘What is my student going to do today? Are they going to give me a
