Corsicana ISD teacher who lost an eye forgives student who attacked her

CORSICANA, Texas (KWTX) – A central Texas educator with more than 30 years of experience is calling for change, adding that while she is angry, she has forgiven the student who blinded her during an attack at school.

Candra Rogers, Collins Intermediate Assistant Principal of Corsicana ISD, 56, she was blinded in her left eye in August after a female student he was trying to calm down following a fight with another student threw a wooden peg that hit her in the eye and knocked it out.

Since then he has not returned to work. “I have headaches every day, every day,” Rogers said. “There are days when I can’t get out of bed.”

It is the first time the career educator has spoken in detail about the harrowing afternoon at school that changed her life forever.

Education runs deep in the Rogers family. She was born the daughter of a school teacher and raised in Manor, Texas.

She didn’t grow up dreaming of teaching, but after she married her husband, Eugene, and had a child, Eugene took her first coaching and teaching job at Palestine ISD, and Candra landed a job at the same district to make ends meet.

“It was the first job I could find, and I had an 18-month-old baby at the time,” she said.

Rogers quickly realized that being an educator was her passion.

“Education was my ministry,” she said.

The couple’s career in education has taken them all over the state of Texas touching the lives of students.

After leaving Palestine ISD, the couple moved in 1992 to Corsicana, where Eugene had graduated from high school. Candra worked as a helper and later as a teacher.

In 1998, the couple moved to North Crowley in Fort Worth, where Candra taught Spanish. She then moved to Manor High School as a teacher before moving to Denton Ryan in 2008.

Candra worked as a testing coordinator in Haltom ISD in 2012 before taking a teaching position in Crowley ISD.

She then moved to Denton Ryan High School as a teacher in 2018. Her last stop before returning to Corsicana was at Waxahachie High School as an assistant principal in 2021.

Life ended when Eugene accepted the head football coaching position at his alma mater Corsicana High School earlier this year.

Candra took a job as an assistant principal at Collins Intermediate and the pair were excited to start a new school year.

It was only the fourth day when the unthinkable happened.

“I was really excited about this school year and it started off well, until it didn’t,” Candra said.

“At lunch, I was sitting with one of the teachers,” Candra recalled. “I heard a call on the radio from our behavior class needing help.”

Rogers rushed into the classroom and found the teacher and all but one student, a sixth grade boy, outside the room.

The boy in the room had gotten into an argument with another student and was enraged.

Candra quietly entered the classroom and was immediately attacked.

The boy first threw chairs at her, which she was able to dodge.

Then he found a hanger. To this day, she’s still not sure why that hanger was even in her classroom.

“He found a hook and threw it and I couldn’t block that fast and it caught me in the eye and hit him,” she said.

“It was pouring, it was bleeding,” Rogers said. “When I touched my eye and looked at it, it was just full of blood.”

Rogers said that despite the critical injury, he never cried.

“I learned to be calm when things are bad,” she said. “I was calm throughout the whole situation and I stayed so calm that after I got hit I stumbled out of the classroom because I was holding my eye and I was bleeding and I went out and called my husband to come and he takes me because I did it. I don’t know the gravity.”

“My husband actually got here and saw me lying there.”

Rogers was taken by medical helicopter from her campus to Parkland Hospital in Dallas.

“There was a nurse with me and I just started going, ‘Oh, Jesus. Oh jesus. Please, she reminded herself.

Rogers was taken to surgery to put her eye back in the socket. Doctors debated removing it, but decided to leave it in the hope that she would regain her sight.

Those hopes have now dimmed.

“I don’t see anything,” Candra said. “Everything is black.”

Rogers was released from the hospital and sent home to recover.

Every day is a struggle, she says.

“I’m not driving yet. I have to learn to adapt.”

Rogers says the trauma affected his entire family. Her oldest son and his wife quit their jobs in Houston and moved to Candra with their daughter, Zoella, to help with care while her husband spends long hours working at his coaching job .

Eugene still comes home every day at lunch to check on her.

Candra said it was devastating to watch the effects on those here, especially Zoella.

“What was really hard for me was that they were afraid of me after that because I have pictures,” she said of the injury. “I can show you the after pictures. She doesn’t understand why anyone would hurt Cici.”

Rogers said he is in counseling and going through different stages of grief. Right now, she’s upset. The student, whom he knew before the incident, has yet to apologize and says he doubts he ever will, but because of her faith, he has forgiven her.

That student is no longer on any Corsicana campus, sources tell KWTX, but because of his age, neither the school district nor the Navarro County District Attorney’s office would comment.

“I forgave him. I had to,” she said. “I am angry with the student. I am angry with the student’s parents. I’m angry at our state system because no educator should have to go to work and be airlifted to the hospital.”

Rogers held a press conference where he read a scathing statement just days after the incident sent shockwaves across the country.

WEB XTRA: Corsicana ISD Assistant Principal Candra Rogers details the incident with a student that left her with a serious eye injury

The educator blamed a lack of funding for public schools by Gov. Greg Abbott.

During the conference, Rogers said that Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code, created in 1995 to protect marginalized students in how those students are disciplined, should be “re-evaluated so that no other teacher, principal or educator never be put in this position. “

“I believe in public school education, but what happened to me should never happen to another educator. Mr Abbott is releasing the funds because you are also to blame for what happened to me,” she said on August 27.

Rogers wonders how her outcome might have been different if schools had better options for children with behavioral problems or better services offered to meet their needs.

She says the bottom line is that public schools are underfunded, staff are stressed and stretched, and everyone is suffering as a result.

“Chairs don’t, shouldn’t be thrown in school, but this happens every day across the country. It’s not okay,” Rogers said.

“School is a place to come to learn, to thrive, to achieve things you didn’t think you could. It is no place for chairs or hangers.”

The beloved teacher also urges parents to be more involved in raising their children.

“Watch your children. Give them the attention they need. What we as educators are dealing with are children who have been raised by electronics.”

Rogers is scheduled to have her eye removed in early January in Dallas. A prosthesis will be put in its place.

She hopes it will ease the constant pain she is currently experiencing.

The veteran teacher and administrator has visited her campus since the incident because she “misses her people.”

She’s not sure if or when she’ll ever return, but she says she’s pretty motivated to try.

“To save one. To help one, Rogers said. “If there’s one I can help, it’s that one.”

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