Bronx Teacher Forgives Students Whose Fight Restulted in Her Fall and Miscarriage
A Bronx teacher offers a lesson in forgiveness.
April 19, 2011— -- The lesson a New York Spanish teacher Lissedia Batista wants to leave her students with goes far beyond verb conjugations. Although Batista miscarried after she was accidentally pushed while trying to break up a fight between two of her students, she returns to the classroom this week with only forgiveness and understanding for the pair.
"They're so young, and for something like that to follow them for the rest of their lives? I think they were already stressed enough with the fact that they felt they caused the death of someone's child," Batista, who teaches at Exploration Academy in the Bronx, told the New York Post.
"I can't put anybody through that," she said.
The accident that ended with the loss of Batista's unborn child began when two 15-year-old students, one in ninth grade and the other in tenth, argued over a classroom chair, Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, told ABC News at the time of the accident.
When Batista tried to break up the fight, she was accidentally pushed and fell to the ground. She was rushed to the hospital where doctors determined that she had miscarried.
Batista said she would not press charges against the two teenagers because she didn't want them to end up in the criminal justice system, someone close to Batista told WABC-TV.
Despite her loss, Batista seems more worried about the welfare of the two students than she is about her own.
"You don't know how some people might take it. Some people just really go into deep depressions, and teenagers nowadays have a lot to go through and they are the ones that commit the most suicides out of all the age groups. I didn't want something like that to happen at all. I don't hold any sour feelings toward them at all," she told the New York Post.
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