By high school, students really can handle a pretty high level of responsibility–but not without some adult guidance and structure. What this may look like is a student committee (facilitated by an adult) to set and communicate reasonable expectations. It may involve the creation of acceptable activities during noon hour.

Now, all that said, IF there is a fight (and I am not at all clear that there was a fight per se–a food fight is less about conflict and more about doing something stupid), there are ways to intervene that do not include choking. Two adults can grab arms from two sides rendering the student incapable of further bottle throwing–even if both are smaller than the student–but this does suggest that the single adult in a cafeteria ruled by anarchy is inadequate. I haven’t seen too many administrators without walkie-talkies, lately, however, so other adults might easily have been summoned. Removing bottles from reach, is another strategy that might have been appropriate.

Ignoring it?

Calling the police?

If the adult was expected to break up a fight, what technique was he supposed to use?

Using his classmates to break it up?

Getting a team of adults to break it up?

Talking?

Shouting?

Waving his finger?

Was the adult trained to deal with this?

In another life I broke up a lot of fights. I put my hands on a lot of young men and a few women. I was not a teacher. I had no special training. My Chief said I was not expected to use minimum necessary force. I never had to choke anyone, but in those days a police choke hold was acceptable. I grabbed a guy by his ear once. Fortunately, it did not come off and it saved the kid from a Special Court Martial. He did not appreciate it. Once you get within arms reach things happen fast and do not follow a script. My goal was to break up the fight and keep them apart after I succeeded. Breaking up the fight was usually the easy part. My usual problem was the loser wanted the fight to continue and would provoke the other by screaming obscenities. I can easily imagine choking occurring after breaking up a fight while trying to restrain one boy from reaching the other.

The description in the news sounds like the adult may not have even needed to lay a hand on the kid, which may be why he was charged.

Do they teach this in Schools of Education? What was to School/District policy?

Now–I know very few schools that care a fig about setting behavior when they are looking at student-student engagement. I also don’t know that it figures very heavily in a courtroom–although it might. Choking is not an appropriate response to student (or other human) behavior.