Teacher accused of telling 10-year-old pupil, ‘Get your a-- out of my class,’ resigns

A Bibb County teacher accused of grabbing a 10-year-old pupil at Heritage Elementary School, dragging him by his arm and telling him, “Get your a-- out of my classroom!” has resigned.

The teacher, Jessica Garcia Stevens, 37, charged with simple battery, turned herself in at the Bibb jail Thursday morning and was released about an hour later after posting a $650 bond.

Her arrest stems from a reported run-in with a fourth-grade pupil at the Thomaston Road school on May 16. The matter was brought to the attention of a Bibb sheriff’s deputy late last week by the boy’s parents.

The deputy’s write-up says the parents tell of receiving a phone call from Stevens after school on May 16. According to the deputy’s report, Stevens told the boy’s mother “that her son had been disruptive in class and that she had enough of his behavior so she grabbed him by his arm and told him to, ‘Get your a-- out of my classroom!’”

The report added that the mother took pictures of the boy’s arm, which were said to show “small bruises in lines on his wrist that appeared to have been caused by a tight grip.”

The mother reportedly told the deputy she was “disgusted” by the teacher’s alleged actions after school officials showed her video footage of the encounter that was recorded by a security camera.

The deputy’s report describes what he himself saw when he watched the footage, which he noted shows some children in a classroom “playing and running”:

“Mrs. Stevens gets up from her desk and comes around to where the students are and they begin to sit down. Mrs. Stevens walks over to where (the boy) is sitting and stoops over him appearing to lecture him. … As she walks away (the boy) purposefully knocks a lunch bag off of the table he had been sitting at that happened to contain some glass objects … that broke on the ground. Mrs. Stevens then aggressively walks back over to (the boy), grabs his arm, and pulls him out of his chair onto the floor and begins dragging him with his chair attached to his foot. … She lets him go about halfway to the door, then reaches down and grabs him again and begins dragging him over to the door where she tries to push him out.”

Stevens, a teacher for roughly a decade who was in her first year at Heritage, was placed on administrative leave after the alleged incident. She resigned May 24. School officials said she has in the past taught at Taylor Elementary and Vineville Academy.

This story was originally published June 1, 2018 at 4:23 PM with the headline "Teacher accused of telling 10-year-old pupil, ‘Get your a-- out of my class,’ resigns."