Teachers do not generally fear their pupils' families, but many have good reason to be afraid of pupils themselves. There have always been isolated incidences of fathers or other family members attacking teachers after a child has been chastised, but they are rare, say teachers, and not on the increase. If they fear anyone, it is their own pupils.
"One child was expelled from our school last year after grabbing a female teacher by the throat. Last week, my car and that of another teacher were vandalised in the school parking lot. And there's quite a lot of fifth-year and sixth-year boys, big six-footers, physically squaring up to teachers to try and intimidate them", says Sean.
A teacher in a large second-level school in south Dublin, he believes that intimidation of teachers by pupils is widespread. Usually, this is verbal, or physical in the sense of threatening gestures. It is still rare enough for students to step over the line and actually hit a teacher, but it does happen.
The president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, Ms Alice Prendergast, recently said that teachers had been knocked down, threatened with violence and had their property vandalised. Discipline had disimproved, she said, and "bullying of teachers" was more prevalent.
According to the assistant general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, Mr John White, women teachers are particularly vulnerable. "It's only beginning to come to our attention, but we get a small but worrying trickle of reports of sexual harassment, both physical and verbal, of female teachers."
The reports reflect growing indiscipline in schools. A widespread lack of respect for authority has filtered down to children, and in the classroom this spells trouble.
Michael, a teacher who took early retirement a few years ago, but whose wife still works as a teacher, says: "Teaching is a different ball game now compared to 20, 30 years ago. It's more containment than teaching. Even simple things, like the noise level, get to teachers. There was a time when the teacher came in, said `do this', `do that', and there was silence. Now you can't expect a class to stay quiet. A lot of young people don't accept your authority like they used to; they don't obey their parents either. We might be talking about only 10 per cent of pupils, but that's enough to disrupt a school."
As the British government is set to issue guidelines on the use of force by teachers on pupils in UK schools, the Department of Education here has promised to issue a circular on assaults on teachers to school boards of managements so that teachers, principals, students and parents will know what the policy is.
Mr White believes this will cover the position of outsiders on a school premises. "Basically, outsiders shouldn't be on the school premises unless they've reported to the school secretary. Arguably, greater alertness and security measures could have avoided a situation like the one in the south-east."
Both Mr White and Senator Joe O'Toole, general secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, also caution against overreaction. Irish schools, especially primary schools, are not yet blackboard jungles. Teachers do, however, want the range of supports that they have always believed they should have been given when corporal punishment was banned.
Teachers emphatically do not want a return of that. According to Senator O'Toole: "We don't believe there's any place for violence in schools, and that includes corporal punishment."
Sean talks about the kind of behaviour teachers have to contend with: "One 17-year-old boy in my class pretended he was a dog; he and his friend began to woof, then pretended to bite each other." Ms Prendergast, in her speech, talked of children being high on drugs in the classroom - "not just in fourth year, but nowadays in first year, too".
It all adds up to stress and teacher burn-out. Michael believes that younger teachers "who went to school themselves in this kind of environment" probably cope better, because it is what they are used to. But many friends of his who have been teaching for over 20 years would love to get out.
He added: "I do think it's a young person's game and that 50 should be retirement age."