As a 20-something year old girl teaching 9th grade English teacher in the public school system, I always heard the same question at the beginning of the school year.
Student: Do you have any kids?
Me: Yep. About 140 of them. You all are my kids.
This was never more true than when I discovered one of my kids was in trouble.
I taught my English classes, using the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song to teach rhyme scheme to my students and getting excited when they actually got the beauty of Shakespeare. I loved it.
And one day, I found myself sitting behind my desk while a student partially raised their shirt to show me red marks and bruises on their abdomen. Big ones.
And then I heard the story of what the parent did.
And then the words
"But you can't tell anyone. Not anyone."
When the 14 year old child walked out of my classroom that day, I felt like my heart walked out too. I began worrying about that child in ways I never thought I could worry, in ways that only parents worry. And I picked up the phone.
After a couple of phone calls, I learned that I had a duty to report this, of course. I figured as much.
Texas law says that all adults who suspect abuse of a child or an elderly person must report their suspicions, but teachers have a special responsibility. Teachers, doctors, nurses, and child care workers have exactly 48 hours to report their findings.
No one wants to violate the trust of a child, but my responsibility to protect that child was of greater importance than my relationship with them. I would have to do exactly what my student did not want me to do, violating their trust and perhaps making this teenager hate me, as teenagers are prone to do when someone violates their trust.
I called my husband to tell him I would be late coming home from work, really late, later than usual. And then I began my report.
It wasn't fun and emotionally, it wasn't easy, but I did it. The state of Texas has a simple online program for making these reports, and my name would be kept confidential. Unfortunately, filing a report is not where the process ended for my student or for me.
I love my kids. Love them. Still do.
So the worrying continued. At night, I wondered where my student was sleeping. Was my student back at home or still staying with friends? Where would they end up if they were taken away from their parents for a while?
And on days when the child was absent from school, then my fears were magnified.
I told the student about my report, and that legally, I had no other option. They seemed to understand, though they didn't like it.
In a lot of ways, this student's life became more complex and more difficult because I reported the issue. They could not live at home for a time. There was a lot of junk and hassle that came from it. I doubt the student appreciated me for it. I never knew the details of what came out of the situation. It wasn't my job to know.
Eventually, the school year ended and I don't think I saw that student again while they were in high school.
Until one day a few years ago. My husband waited in the car while I walked into a local store, pregnant with one of my own babies when I ran into one of my kids.
The student recognized me and called out my name from far off, so excited to see me. We hugged.
"Thank you for everything."Thank you for reporting it? Thank you for being a listening ear when I needed it? Or thank you for making me love Shakespeare? I don't know what the student thanked me for. It really didn't matter.
I walked out to the car and told my husband
"That is why I spent four years of my life as a teacher."
It wasn't just about getting kids excited about literature or sharing my love for the semicolon with my nerdy, giddy excitement. It was about loving my kids.
I never thought I would have to worry about child abuse with a 14 year old. As responsible adults, we need to keep an eye out for this with all children that we're around.
Have you ever had to report child abuse? Would you even know how or were you clueless as I was?
I am a foster carer and we have had to report disclosures of abuse that our child has made since being in our care when she remembers things that happened to her before she was removed. In our case tho we only have to tell the caseworker and they do all the official stuff. It is hard having to break trust but we have made sure that Chatterbox knows we need to tell our caseworker some things. In our training we were also told that if a child asks us not to tell anyone - we should tell them that sometimes we have to tell other people to keep the kids safe.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you got that moment of gratitude :-)
thank you for reporting it <3 and for sharing your story.
ReplyDeleteI wish some one had had the guts to do that for me as a child, though I would have hated them for it at the time. <3