Captain's Log 4
On Monday
I had a break through moment with a female student in my class who in the past has
been shy, reserved and resistant to completing class work or participating in
discussions at all. I asked her how her day was to which she shook her head and
just said “awful”. I asked her what was going on and she said her mom and her
had a fight, and that it was a regular thing. We talked about her upcoming move
to England to live with her father; our connections to the Air Force and at the
end of the conversation she asked me, “Are you going to be here the rest of the
year?” To which I answered “Yes, of course!” She smiled- I have never seen this
girl smile-and said “Good”. During the conversation, however, she confessed (I’m
paraphrasing for her own privacy) that the fights between her mother and her were
moderately physical. I was shocked that she had decided to share this with me. I
reported back to my coordinating instructor which he said he would document and
report during his free period, and then we briefly discussed her past history.
Apparently she had shared similar information with him, but left out the
physical aspect of the fighting. It dawned on me that for this girl I had
become someone she could trust with private and personal information.
While I know it is mandatory to report, and I fully believe
in the idea, I am worried that our teacher-student relationship will lose trust
to which I see as harmful to her. I see this as harmful because I see already
see her disconnect in the classroom and I’m hoping this won’t add further to
it. I also can tell that these fights DO affect
her classroom performance and that it is absolutely necessary to report this-
that this is quite possible her call for help.
My
experience from this incident serves to affirm, in my own beliefs, the
importance of mandatory reporting as well as the weight of relationships
between students and teachers. We need to be the person they can trust but also
act as their safety line, especially when they can’t see the way out for
themselves. In my own classroom in the future I want to establish trusting
relationships with my students and maintain an open door policy so when things like
this happen in their lives they can trust me to act in their best interest.
A final
thought: What do you say to a child who says something like that? I’m a little
in despair about that conversation still. At that time I just sort of paused,
and sort of re-directed the subject. I don’t know if it was the right thing to
do, but she must not have thought anything poorly of it by the way the
conversation ended. I mean how do you console someone who confesses something
like that?
This is Captain Danielle Raschko, signing off.
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