Yvette Brebnor’s right arm still hurts where the boy struck her. She wanted to teach him to read. Instead, she got smacked and attacked — by a fourth-grader who charged her with a chair over his head.

The Baltimore elementary school teacher had asked the boy to get to class.

Starting with that incident, he started taunted her, calling her ugly and stupid, until it escalated to violence.

“He was coming through the door with a chair on his head, coming to hit me,” said Brebnor, 47.

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“I picked up a hole puncher and said, ‘If you come in here, I’m going to have to hit you with this!’ ”

Another teacher intervened. But when Brebnor walked through the doorway, she saw the boy’s mother there, too.

“So she was in the building and didn’t stop him,” Brebnor said.

The boy was placed on 45-day suspension — twice — but he kept returning to the school and harassing Brebnor for months. Then, two months ago, Brebnor’s repeated requests prompted the boy’s transfer to another school.

Brebnor spoke out against students assaulting teachers in the wake of video surfacing online of a female student beating Jolita Berry, a Reginald F. Lewis High School teacher.

“This is what happens when the problem is not really dealt with and is just covered over,” Brebnor said.

She’s lost count of the number of teachers in Baltimore and New York who told her they’ve been assaulted by students.

“This needs to be addressed before some teacher gets killed in the classroom,” she said.

In other recent Baltimore school violence, a brawl broke out Thursday at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School. A male teacher, 54, was taken to Union Memorial Hospital for treatment after he was injured trying to break up a fight, WJZ reported.

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com