The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is com­mend­ing the teacher at the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School who used his body to shield a fe­male stu­dent while she was be­ing at­tacked by oth­er girls in a class­room.

But TTUTA Pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin is urg­ing male teach­ers to be care­ful when in­ter­ven­ing in fights in­volv­ing fe­male stu­dents.

A video of the in­ci­dent has gone vi­ral on so­cial me­dia plat­forms and showed the teacher ini­tial­ly at­tempt­ing to stop the group of girls from as­sault­ing the stu­dent. When that proved fu­tile, he placed his body to pro­tect the vic­tim from the blows she was re­ceiv­ing. As a re­sult, he too was as­sault­ed as the at­tack­ers tried des­per­ate­ly to in­flict more harm on the stu­dent the teacher was pro­tect­ing.