Violence against teachers in conflict-affected regions has devastating consequences on their well-being and work, yet there is limited research on its drivers. In this article, we carry out a mixed-methods analysis of the causes of violence against teachers in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), leveraging a longitudinal survey of 932 teachers in 55 schools and 211 qualitative interviews. We find that 43.3 percent of teachers in the study schools have experienced a direct violent attack in their lifetime. We identify three levels at which a range of interrelated causes of violence operate: first, the entanglement of schools in violent political economies and the interferences by armed actors in school governance; second, the social position of teachers, whereby specific facets of teachers' identity, status, and role can expose them to violence; and, third, the escalation of school-level disputes, which can spill out of schools and lead to violence.