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• Elona Hartjes, MEd (Candidate), Ontario Certified Teacher

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“What’s with your face?” Lisa asked Jim as she sat down at the table at the beginning of my  grade 9 class.

“Mumble, mumble, mumble”, Jim answered with his head down down in his arms on the table.

“Did your Mother hit you on your face?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered quietly, “She hits me all the time.”

When I first heard Jim, not his real name, say that his mother hits him all the time, I was shocked.  “That has to stop right now,” I thought. I knew that teachers are required by law to report any case of child abuse that comes to their attention.  I quickly went to the office next door and called   the VP and briefly told her what I’d heard.  She told me someone would come up to supervise my class so that she and I  could discuss our next step. The next step of course was to  report what I’d heard to Children’s Aid.  I had to make the call  to Childrens’ Aid because I was the one who first heard about the abuse but the VP stayed with me while I made the call. A worker came to school later that day,  took my statement and then talked to the VP and was going to follow up with the family.

I had mixed emotions about reporting the incident.   I definitely wanted  to stop any future abuse, but I was worried that by reporting it I would make things worse for Jim at home down the road. I certainly didn’t want that to happen.   We had a bit of training about having to report child abuse, but didn’t have any training about what happens after we report an incident of child abuse.  I hoped Jim’s mom gets some kind of counseling for her issues, whatever they are.

The VP and principal were very supportive and tried to reassure me that all would be well but despite their best efforts, I wasn’t convinced .  I keep thinking that by trying to help Jim, I could actually making his life even worse. I don’t want to do that.   The abuse has to stop that’s for sure.  I can’t sleep just thinking about Jim. I don’t know if other teachers have felt the same way.

I  even used Google Scholar to try to find some research about the topic of teachers reporting child abuse.  I’m not sure what I hoped to find but  this is what I found

---

doi:10.1016/S0145-2134(00)00218-0 |

Objective: There are three general objectives: First, to determine the number of reports of abuse made by teachers, their knowledge of child abuse laws and reporting procedures, and their perceived deterrents in reporting abuse; second, to determine if there were gender or ethnic differences in reporting; and third, to evaluate teachers responses to case vignettes.

Method: A survey of 197 teachers was conducted. They were given a questionnaire that included demographic information, knowledge of child abuse laws and procedures, and two scenarios of legally reportable child abuse.

Results: Seventy-three percent of this sample reported that they had never made a report of child abuse, while those who had made reports made an average of one report. Only 11% of teachers reported that there were instances in which they believed abuse may have occurred, but failed to report. Additionally, these teachers felt that their pre- and post-service training did not adequately prepare them for abuse reporting. The most common reasons cited for not reporting abuse were fear of making an inaccurate report, feeling as though child protective services do not help families, and no apparent physical signs of abuse. There were no gender differences in reporting. The teachers’ responses to the case vignettes were not consistent with their previous reports.

Conclusions: In general, most teachers reported having never made a child abuse report. Although only a small percentage of teachers reported failing to report abuse, when presented with legally reportable case vignettes, many failed to report. The majority of teachers report receiving inadequate training in child abuse signs, symptoms, and reporting procedure. There is an obvious need for more education for teachers that addresses their perceived deterrents and aids them in feeling more confident in making reports of child abuse.

It seems I’m not the only one who feels inadequately prepared and has reservations about the whole thing.  I would like to talk to a case worker and get some idea what happens when they investigate reports of child abuse. What are the chances that the abuse increases because of the report I filed?   I’m worried about Jim.

Some days I feel overwhelmed. What do my students want from me anyway. Jeez!

I know what the administration wants from me. This coming week they want me to attend commencement this Friday evening, make my reluctant students into independent learners, supervise the cafeteria first half of period 4, stay after school to help kids who need math help, donate my blood, sweat and tears so more kids will pass the provincial math test, the dreaded EQAO. etc. I guess you can tell, I’m feeling a tad bit pushed to the limits this week- especially about the expectation of making making my reluctant students into independent learners. It seems to me that no matter how many different ways you lead a horse to water, sometimes the horse chooses not to drink! Differentiation does not always work.

I guess I was thinking about all the ways that I’ve been leading my horses to water and finding out they don’t want to drink and thinking now what! I’m beginning to realize that sometimes I just think way too much. All this thinking came about because of ANOTHER pd session we had about differentiated instruction.( Why don’t the powers that be realize they could differentiate our pd sessions so that some of us won’t be bored beyond belief. Never mind- I’ll save that discussion for another time.)

I was sitting having another cup of tea (green tea because I’m trying to stay healthy) thinking new whoop-dee-do thing can I do in the classroom that will benefit my students when I suddenly recalled that I know what my students want. How do I know? They told me. I even wrote a blog post about that. How could I forget. I’ve been writing this blog for 4+ years and often forget what insights I’ve shared and lessons I learned about teaching. I guess I need to go back find the blog post, read it and see what they want from me.

Here it is.

1. My students want me to be a teacher and not their friend.

Almost every year students complain to me about teachers trying to be their friend. They don’t want teachers to be their friends, but of course they do want teachers to be friendly and to treat them fairly and with respect. Kids want us to be the good adult role models they need in their lives. I work hard to make sure that they realize that although I’m friendly, I am not their friend. If kids think teachers are their friends, then when teachers have to do the tough things like call home because of something, the kids feel betrayed because they thought the teacher was a friend and friends don’t snitch on one another. Once a kid feels betrayed by their teacher , that’s it. Some kids will stop learning just to spite the teacher, and the teacher has lost the opportunity to be that positive adult influence kids need.
Over the years, I’ve had kids try to black mail me emotionally by saying that if I call home about some issue , they won’t be my friend. It’s that relational aggression thing. They are trying to bully me into not calling home or whatever I was going to do that they don’t like. That’s when I tell them that while I have a friendly teaching style, I’m not their friend. I’m their teacher. There’s a big difference. As their teacher, I have an obligation to let their parents know how things are going. I have an obligation to see that they learn as much as possible while in my class and out of respect for them , I have to call home. Kids understand that. They don’t like it, but they understand it.

2. My students want me to realize it’s better to catch them doing good rather than catching them doing bad.

I’ve learned that students respond better when I catch them being good and comment on it. I say things like oh, good, you’re on time for class, or you’re sitting in your seat with your work open or you’ve remembered your pencil etc. I make sure that my comments are authentic. Kids can detect it if I’m not.

I’ve also learned that I’m happier catching my students being good instead of the bad.

3. My students want to have a hand in developing the class rules and hen have them posted on the wall for all to see and remember.

I tell my students on the first day that because they’ve been going to school for such a long time, they are experts at knowing what makes a classroom work or not work. So, I want them to help me come up with classroom rules so that our classroom can work. I get them to share their ideas ideas about what a classroom that works looks like and sounds like and what students need to be doing so that learning goes on. I make sure that school rules are included in the list. I try not to have too many rules , so we work at reducing the list to include only the really important rules. Also, I’ve learned that the classroom rules should be stated in a positive not negative way-, for example be on time, not don’t be late. Then, I get the kids to make posters listing the rules and then we put them up in the classroom in several spots. I usually ask for someone to volunteer to have his or her poster displayed. There are always volunteers.

Displaying the classroom rules in several places , usually on each wall somewhere, is really important. The posters are like signs along the highway that and tell drivers what to do while traveling on the road. The posters in the classroom remind kids what to do while in the classroom on their road to learning. If someone is having a problem behaving in class, I can catch their eye and just point to the poster and they get the message. We all need reminders.

4. My students want to know that their teachers are human beings first and teachers second.

Students want me not to take myself too seriously. I make mistakes like anyone else because like everyone else I’m human. I tell my students that because I’m human once in a while I make a mistake too, and it’s no big deal. Everyone makes mistakes. What’s important is that we learn form our mistakes.

5. My students want me to remember tomorrow is another day.

Some days when nothing seems to go right, I try to remind myself tomorrow is another day, and I’ll have another chance to do it right.

6. My students want me to be prepared because they might not be.

I have a few containers with pencils, pens, markers, paper, erasers etc available for students to use when they forget their supplies. I refuse to get bent out of shape because they’ve come to class unprepared. That’s what at-risk students do. That’s why they are at-risk. I swear they arrive to class, not just my class by the way, like rock stars expecting their handlers to take care of every little detail. I used to get annoyed, but now I save my energy for more important things and simply ask them to return whatever they’ve borrowed to me at the end of class so I can lend it to someone else who needs it. This actually works most of the time. I do label things with masking tape. I put my name on everything. If my students think the school supplied it, they sometimes don’t care about returning things, but if they think it’s mine they will return it.

I’ve also learned to be prepared in yet another way. Sometimes the lesson I’ve planned for the day goes over like a lead balloon. Why? Who knows. It doesn’t take much to distract these kids . I keep emergency lesson plans on hand for just such a time. Usually my emergency lesson plans involve a review of skills that I have already taught. It can take the form of puzzles, word searchers, crossword puzzles for math as well as English. I have a nice thick file of activities that I have collected over the years. The internet is a wonderful source . Just google whatever you are looking for and you will have a good choice. I personally like edhelper.com. It’s just gotten better and better over the years and the activities from there have saved my sanity on many occasions.

7. My students want me to call home when things are going well.

Calling home to talk to parents about their kids when their kids are doing well is very important. It just takes a few moments and makes all the difference in the world. You don’t have to do the entire class at once. Spread the calls out over a week. Of course my at-risk classes usually have less than 15 students in them so calling home doesn’t take forever. Parents who get these calls are usually delighted, and the kids are surprised that I’ve called home telling their parents that they did something good. They’re used to the opposite. Since I’m catching my students being good, it isn’t hard to find something good to share with their parents. Calling home with good news buys all kinds of goodwill because it tells parents that you care about their kid. Parents of at-risk kids need good news.
8. I’ve learned to ask for help when I need it

If I’m having serious problems with a student in my class, I’ll go and talk to his guidance counselor, his vice-principal and his other teachers to see if they know something that can help me reach this kid or if something happened at home that the kid is having problems dealing with. Then I’ll call home. I used to call home first, but then a few times something had happened and the parent told the school but the message hadn’t got to me yet. The parent was annoyed, and I felt stupid so now for serious problems I ask at school first and then call home.

9. My students want me to appreciate they have different learning styles and different multiple intelligences and to keep this in mind when I’m planning my lessons.

If I take into account the fact that my students have different learning styles and different multiple intelligences and plan my lessons accordingly, I will have more success engaging the kids. It’s quite easy to determine what a student’s learning style and multiple intelligences are through different inventories. For example, last semester I determined that the kids in my math class were strong visual learners and very weak auditory learners so there was little point in me standing up at the front of the class telling them what they needed to learn and what I wanted them to do because they weren’t going to get it. So I used a lot of activities that involved graphic organizers and that worked. It pays off big time for a teacher to know what strategies work for each of the learning styles and each of the multiple intelligences. Kids learn better if a teachers teaching style and their learning style is the same. Kids who complain about teachers not teaching them are often really complaining about a clash between the teacher’s teaching style and the kids learning style. Teachers really need to teach to all the different learning styles using different multiple intelligences and allow students to demonstrate their learning using their strong multiple intelligences. That skill takes time to learn, but there lots of PD on learning styles, multiple intelligences and graphic organizers. There’s lots of information on line as well. I’m forever googling to see what’s new and works.

After reading or rather rereading the above, I feel so much better. These are things my students want from me, and these are things that I can do without feeling overwhelmed. Now if I could only say that about all the paperwork that I have to do. I swear there’s twice as much paper work now than there used to be.

Graphic organizers are one of the most useful tools students or teachers for that matter can use in the classroom.  Many graphic organizers are available free on-line. Strong visual learners usually love using graphic organizers to organize their thinking when doing assignments. Of course, not everyone of my students are visual learners and take to graphic organizers like the proverbial duck to water. But, that doesn’t stop me from encouraging students in my learning strategies classes to use graphic organizers when appropriate.

I tell my students that although they may have a preferred learning style, they need to do all they can to develop their less preferred learning styles as well so that learning becomes easier. I have found from personal experience with students and as a learner myself  as all three learning modalities, visual, auditory and hands-on  strengthened because of practice using them learning  became easier.

I recently came across this great site that has  free graphic organizers galore I can download and  use.  The site is a real time saver because I don’t have to create my own graphic organizers like I used to do.  I’m sure  you find graphic organizers you can download and use.

One of my friends at work found this site useful. The graphic organizers are also free. Thanks for sharing, Jenn. There are also suggestions for when to use the specific graphic organizers.

R-learning. That’s a term I haven’t heard before. R-learning stands for robot learning. The South Korea government plans to have thirty-six robot teachers or Engkeys teaching in 18 classrooms by the end of the year.

R-learning in my classroom? Robots teaching my students? LOL. Honestly, I can’t imagine a robot teaching my classes. Could you imagine robots teaching yours? I’m going to ask my student tomorrow to tell me what they think about R-learning. I’ll share some of their comments with you in my next post.

Engkey robots are constructed of bright plastic and computer circuits and will have the image of a teacher on their face. Teachers will operate these robots from remote locations. (I’m assuming there will be an adult in the classroom to supervise students) Apparently there is a shortage of native speaking English teachers to teach English classes so Engkeys operated by native speaking English teachers are going to deliver the lessons in primary classes. The rational for R-learning and using robots to teach is that a highly skilled robot is preferable to “just an average teacher”. The claim is that robot teachers are not designed to replace human teachers but are a cost effective way to deliver relatively simple and repetitive training. I bet!!! There is an iRobi that takes attendance. Now that sounds good to me. that’s something I wouldn’t miss doing.

Can robots really take the place of teachers?

Mun-Taek Cho, the South Korean research engineer involved with developing these robots claims that robots cannot completely take the place of human teachers because of the limitations on the current robotic technologies.

Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield in England maintains that robots aren’t bad as add-ons in the classroom, but if children are looked after mostly by robots for too long they would develop attachment disorders. He argues that there is no understanding in robots, just processing.

Tucker Balch, associate professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, doubts that robots will ever be able to lead a classroom. They may be useful add-ons to assist teachers, but that’s it. As for the claim that robots are better than teachers, Balch doesn’t think so. He notes that teaching is a creative activity, one that involves understanding the students you are trying to teach. Artificial intelligence isn’t up to the challenge.

I’m wondering now. Can robots understand students individual learning styles, multiple intelligences and differentiate instruction and assessment techniques to meet the needs of students? Maybe, but there’s more to students than their preferred learning styles and multiple intelligences. Balch notes robots are excellent at processing but not at understanding. Will a student ever say that a robot was their favourite teacher and because of having that robot teach them the student stayed in school and graduated? Maybe not.

Here’s the link to the article I used in preparing this post.

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