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I agree with you wholeheartedly, TerryG. Even so, she had already adopted the mindset to defend herself and begun putting that in practice, which may have limited the apparent size/strength advantage of the student if he had not backed down. I imagine (speculation only, of course) that she knew exactly where her next strikes would be targeted.

The other issue in my mind is the mindset of the rest of the students in the class. If the incident had escalated, what would their "herd" response be???

Based on what the cell phone video showed, the male bad apple student was simply being a bully as others have stated. He used his size to his advantage as he encroached on her personal space, at which time the teacher victim had to retreat. Student continued to advance, despite warnings from the teacher to stop. The teacher's response was measured and effective against the student bully -- a few punches then stopping. Kudos to the teacher for delivering a clearly-needed lesson to the student bully.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want the word or job of "teacher" to be synonymous with "victim". If victims are teaching our kids, we can only expect our kids to polarize into victims and bullies too in fairly short order.