By Dennis Romero -
NBC News
A substitute teacher at a Mesquite, Texas, school has been fired after it was discovered she had started fights between 12- and 13-year-olds in her class, school officials said Friday.
The teacher, who had been hired in early March, was fired Thursday after learning of the events that occurred at Kimbrough Middle School the previous day, the Mesquite Independent School District explained in a statement.
Kimbrough Middle School in Mesquite, Texas, where a teacher allowed fights between students.Google Maps
"Our investigation revealed that this substitute teacher encouraged students to fight each other during class, outlined rules for students to follow, and even instructed a student to guard the classroom door while the fights were taking place." said the entity, which described the teacher's behavior as "appalling and intolerable."
The district said it had referred the matter to the Mesquite Police Department, where a spokesperson confirmed that an investigation has already been launched.
The facts were exposed after a student videotaped two fights.
The images captured some students inciting others to participate in new disputes and revealed that several of them ended up bloody.
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"I couldn't see the full video," Beatriz Martínez, the mother of the young woman who captured the images, told the local NBC station in Dallas-Fort Worth.
"I had to stop it several times because I didn't believe it was real," she said.
The teacher even went so far as to move the desks to create a space in the classroom where the fights would take place, she said.
The recording also picked up the sound of a stopwatch and a woman's voice saying "30 seconds," in an apparent warning to start a fight, according to NBC.
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Martínez was grateful that her daughter was not involved in any physical dispute, despite the ridicule she said she had received from some colleagues.
"He saved her the bell," she pointed out.
The incident in Mesquite comes after a Florida teacher was charged Monday with four counts of encouraging a minor to commit a crime after allegedly promoting class fights between girls at a Tallahassee high school, according to court documents.
