An audio recording taken Wednesday at Untalan Middle School in Barrigada features what sounds like a woman yelling at and threatening students. Guam Department of Education acting deputy superintendent Christopher Anderson confirmed when the incident occurred, that there actually are two recordings the school has, and that the school principal in investigating the matter.
The source who sent the recording to Kandit said the woman yelling in the recording is an Untalan teacher.
“Shut up!” the woman can be heard in the recording yelling multiple times. Her verbiage in the next phrase is not entirely clear: “I will [verb] you…”, however an AI evaluation by captioning application VEED suggests the full threat was, “I will take you and I don’t care who comes after me!”
The tirade captured in the one recording sent to Kandit continues, “Shut up! Shut your mouth! Just shut up!”
“We take all matters involving student and staff interactions seriously and are conducting a thorough investigation,” GDOE acting public information officer Teresita Naputi said. “We appreciate the cooperation of our school community as we follow the appropriate procedures.”
No information is available about what led to the outburst, how many students were present, whether any of the students have special needs, whether any student reported the matter to a guidance counselor or school administration, or whether anyone was hurt.
Kandit has asked these and other questions to GDOE managers. Mr. Anderson said his agency will be able to answer questions once UMS completes its investigation.
According to records found online, the Guam Education Board, which sets the policies governing GDOE, adopted a Guam Teacher Professional Standards that were fashioned after the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments. According to the information provided online:
“School administrators are responsible for ensuring the school environment is free of threats and promotes a conducive learning atmosphere;” and
“Guam Department of Education (DOE) has policies in place to ensure a safe and respectful learning environment, prohibiting harassment, bullying, and other forms of misconduct.”
Kandit has asked Mr. Anderson and Ms. Naputi for these written policies. As of the publication of this story, the GDOE officials have yet to furnish the media with this information. Jolene Toves from the Guam Daily Post, however, shared the manual with the pool of Guam reporters.
According to Title 17 of the laws of Guam, harassment, intimidation, or bullying of students is defined as, “any gesture or written, verbal, or physical act that a reasonable person under the circumstances should know will have the effect of harming a pupil or damaging his or her property or placing a pupil in reasonable fear of harm to his or her person or damage to his or her property, or that has the effect of insulting or demeaning any pupil or group of pupils in such a way as to disrupt or interfere with the school’s educational mission or the education of any pupil. Harassment, intimidation, or bullying includes but is not limited to, such a gesture or written, verbal, or physical act that is reasonably perceived as being motivated by a pupil’s religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, height, weight, or socioeconomic status, or by any other distinguishing characteristic.”
“Students must feel safe and secure at all times,” the board-adopted policy states.
