DETROIT, MI -- A teacher who swatted a student with a broom while trying to break up a frenzied fight between two teenagers was fired over the incident by the Education Achievement Authority.

The fight occurred in a classroom at Pershing High School, one of 15 low-performing Detroit schools taken over by the state-run Education Achievement Authority in 2012.

Cellphone video footage of the incident obtained by WJBK-TV shows the teacher frantically trying to stop the fight using a broomstick before the two were finally separated from each other, apparently by classmates.

Teachers in the EAA turnaround district are not represented by unions.

Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, which represents educators in the traditional Detroit Public Schools, said the teacher was caught in a Catch 22.

"Unfortunately, the method that she used, in terms of swatting one with a broom, is a violation of the corporal punishment provision under the Michigan school code," he told WJBK. "But she's caught in a quandary because under that same code she's expected to do what is necessary to diffuse a situation."

The teacher can appeal her firing in a June meeting of the EAA board, a district spokesperson told the Associated Press.

The two boys involved in the fight were suspended.