Does Teacher’s Pet = Pedophile Alert?

This reminds me… a woman in one of my online mom groups posted about her son’s church teacher wanting to take him to see Star Wars 3D because they were both fans. She wondered if she was overly paranoid for saying no. Sadly, everyone assured her that they would forbid it, too, and that it was creepy, inappropriate, weird, and a “huge red flag.”

I thought it was so sad. We want men to get involved with kids and lambast those who don’t, then freak out when they try!

Yikes. The two prior comments say all I could have offered.

But your comment about “spontaneity” struck a chord with me. I work in a school in an area where the weather runs from changeable to lousy at the time of year. I have been considering proposing a blanket/general purpose permission slip that can be used, with the principal’s OK, for an outing in the immediate neighborhood without the need for a per-trip approval. So a walk to the local lakeside park or library is a thing we can just do without wondering what the weather will be like and if it will work out.

Do you know of any similar initiatives? In a situation like the posted incident, maybe that would forestalled the whole thing. They would have a signed form, the teacher and student check with the office on the way out, and that’s that. Maybe that kid’s parents had already said no: fair enough. But allowing for some spontaneity or teaching outside the classroom is too rich an experience to pass up.

I have to disagree here. If he had the mother’s permission, then fine, but without permission it isn’t appropriate. Your story, Lenore, and the comments that followed about adults in your lives all involved getting a parents’ permission. If someone wanted to take my children to see out for a hamburger to award him for something, fine. If someone took my child out for a hamburger, it wouldn’t make me leap to Sandusky conclusions, but I would seriously question that adult’s judgment.

When I was in 3rd grade I felt ill one day. I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t able to go home. I remember sitting on my teacher’s lap during silent reading. Yes, it was a male teacher. I just remember how it made me feel better, by giving me comfort. It was not creepy or pedophilia. Just a guy trying to help.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to question what happens when an adult escorts a child off campus without parent permission. However, it is not grounds for going ballistic. It isn’t clear how old the child was in this case either. That would make a difference too. This teacher was young and did not understand the legal ramification of their actions. Had something happened to that child, he would have been in deep trouble. That’s why there’s paperwork involved. All a teacher has to do is have the parents sign a permission slip at the beginning of the year that states that they may take short off-site trips and state where those trips might be. That’s it. There are times when I have wanted to take kids out on my own, but I wouldn’t even think of it unless I had parent permission, and preferably in writing. I have a good enough relationship with some of my parents that they wouldn’t have a problem with a short trip off site, but I still wouldn’t do it. It’s just too risky.

My objection to a teacher taking my kid off campus without us being friendly and having an agreement that it’s okay whenever has nothing to do with pedophilia. I just kinda expect my kid to be in school during the school day. I’d like to know if she’s going to be somewhere else. But she’s 6. I may very well feel different when my is in 6th grade.

Certainly where I come from, this would be considered… inappropriate. Teachers and their students are NOT “friends”. Don’t get me wrong, ideally all student-teacher relationships should be friendly and positive, but the teacher is both an accreditor (needs to be marking the students’ work in a fair and uninfluenced manner, so that the grades are a true reflection of the child’s ability) and a disciplinarian. Teacher and student are not social equals – the student is subordinate to the teacher. Therefore, no student-teacher relationship is a “friendship”, and many “friendship”-type activities, such as going out for lunch together, are considered inappropriate for the type of relationship, and if they do occur, are considered odd and abnormal. (Although it is not uncommon for ex-students and ex-teachers to become friends after the student graduates or teacher retires or moves to another school).

Is the teacher grooming the child? Maybe. Possibly. It’s not like one lunch together is equal to “grooming”, but it (to my mind) IS abnormal and somewhat inappropriate behaviour.

Even while I was in university, I did not consider my professors to be “friends”, because while they were my professors, they were not my social equals – they were educators and accreditors, and hence our relationship was a student-teacher or perhaps a business relationship (if you consider tertiary education to be a service bought – I am the customer and they are delivering the product). They needed to be fair and objective in determining what grades I deserved and, hence, whether or not I was worthy of having a degree conferred. It would have probably been frowned upon by the uni had either of us bought the other lunch.

Really, Sera, even at uni? I had rather the opposite experience. I was invited to meals and other get-togethers by several professors while I was at university. I met my Russian economics professor at our local pub with other students on numerous occasions. I never thought of them as friends but as mentors. As exams were blue-booked, my grades were entirely unaffected, as the professors wouldn’t have known which paper was mine in any event. However, my time at uni was vastly improved by the interaction and as a young adult who had been on her own since 16, it was a huge support for me psychologically (not to mention nutritionally). My husband (a law professor) and I host several get-togethers every semester, and the students very much appreciate being able to talk to their professor outside the academic institution. It actually makes my husband’s job easier in a lot of ways, because his students feel much more comfortable approaching him during office hours with issues they might otherwise have been embarrassed to bring up (lest they appear not quite bright enough, etc.). Taking an interest in a student is not being a “friend”, and it can have a huge impact on that student’s life. I will always be grateful to those professors who thought I was worth their time and took real steps to convey it when so many others in my life were actively giving me quite the opposite impression.

This brings to my mind a couple of incidents I remember from my youth. Excellent incidents.
I had a couple of homosexual teachers. I didn’t realize it at the time, as I was oblivious to everything. But my parents certainly knew. Small town. Anyway, in those ancient days the way for them to have children in their lives was to become teachers. And they were good teachers. Mr. Miller had boys hanging out at his house, and some friends and I did things with Miss Riddle.
For all of us, it was great. We did community service projects and helped around their homes. And we had the wonderful benefit of a deeper relationship with these people. There was absolutely nothing inappropriate, ever.
I have thought about the fact that, these days, these relationships would probably be impossible. And I think everyone is the poorer for it.

I’m with Donna here. It is probably correct to say that this was poor judgment on the part of the teacher and should not be permitted as the appropriate way to handle such a situation.

But NOT because taking a child off campus for a bit to eat is “probably” pedophilia, or that it’s the first thing we should worry about. Rather, just because it is unprofessional and is not within the normal (current) expectations of where a child will be during the school day and under what kind of supervision and by whom.

If we still lived in a time and place where things like this really were no big deal and the expectations of exactly how things are done were more flexible, I wouldn’t have a problem with it, either. But a teacher in these times should know that a little more procedure is required.

And the teacher should be “reprimanded” in the sense of being told not to do it again *in that way* and to make sure that he has permission before doing anything like that, but not in the sense of having some permanent stain on his record. What he did was mildly poor judgment, not a crime or even a shadow of a crime.

I’m surprised no one has reacted to this part of Sera’s comment – “Teachers and their students are NOT “friends”. Don’t get me wrong, ideally all student-teacher relationships should be friendly and positive, but the teacher is both an accreditor (needs to be marking the students’ work in a fair and uninfluenced manner, so that the grades are a true reflection of the child’s ability) and a disciplinarian. Teacher and student are not social equals — the student is subordinate to the teacher. Therefore, no student-teacher relationship is a “friendship””

This is so much not what I want my son’s relationships to be like that we left regular school and he attends a Sudbury school, where staff and students *are* equals and sometimes friends. He can go off campus with any adult or student.

I don’t think children should be subordinate to anyone just by virtue of them being young. If a teacher needs that kind of position in order to be able to teach effectively, something is wrong.

I’m a little confused–for most of 70 years I have worked for somebody else. And not all of them were friends, all judged me and made reports on me.

But often I went to lunch or ran errands, and them with me.

I am going to comment on this and shed a little more light on the matter. I live in Houston, and know of YES Prep. They are a chain of public charter schools that focus on lower income kids. The teachers are very involved in the students education. Not like the union and paranoid controlled public schools that suck the life and joy out of teaching because they are unable to actively engage and challenge the kids out of fear being attacked by the parents. My kids go to rival system of public charter schools in Houston. The teachers at my kids’ school are actively engaged in their learning beyond what they did when we had them in the local public schools. My oldest has already had a multi-night lock-in with other students as part of a study group. There was also another night that my oldest (in 7th grade) and a couple of other kids slept over at teacher’s house that heads up the college prep group as part of a study session. While we were hesitant to let him spend the night at a teacher’s house (male teacher at that), we do trust this teacher. It was a school sponsored event. However we are not blind, we talked with our son about things to watch for. We let him know that if at any time there was anything uncomfortable (and discussed situations with him) to walk out of the house and contact us and we would be right there. My son wondered why we were talking about this and presenting these issues if we did not trust his teacher. We let him know that we did trust the teacher or he would not be going. However we cannot be there every minute of the day with him, and he has to know how we expect him to act if ever caught in one of these situations that are usually a subject that to many parents are afraid to talk and actively discuss. That is the weapon against these people that groom kids – you educating your kids and they know that they can trust you. That is how pedophiles work, they find kids that don’t have an open communication with parent figures.

Now going back to YES Prep, The parent knows that these teachers are going to take a vested interest in their kids. We don’t know everything involved in the decision making process of this teacher, or everything that happened leading up to the event. Maybe the child needed someone to talk to right then, but the teacher needed lunch. Should the teacher taken the student off campus without permission of the parent? No. Most of the Teachers at YES are young with only a few years out of college. So they will make slight errors in judgement, but this should not be something to hit the panic alarm over.

I don’t think wanting to know if a teacher takes my child off-campus is helicopter parenting. I don’t need to know exactly where my child is at every moment, but I need to know a general area. What if something happened (family emergency/whatever) and I needed to find my child for whatever reason and s/he is not at the school? Or a doctor’s appointment that I forgot, or my child forgot even if I had mentioned it that morning, and I went to pick him/her up from school and s/he wasn’t there?I think as a parent, even of a free-range kid, I am not asking too much to be able to find my child in a relatively short amount of time, and I cannot do that if a teacher has taken him/her to lunch away from school without letting me know first.

I have to *slightly* disagree — I had many great and close teacher/student relationships which I value to this day, but I do believe that no teacher should EVER be alone outside the bounds of his/her teaching duties without having clearly communicated his/her intentions to do so with administrators and parents. This is one instance in which I believe the risks are too great — and I am a parent who is not remotely “helicopter-y” and allows my children to wander beaches and parks outside of my bounds of vision, and to run down sidewalks and around corners, etc. (This might not sound like much, but they’re all five-and-under.)

Why can’t we trust a teacher to be alone with our children? They did a background check after all! (j/k- I know background checks don’t actually protect kids). However, we do allow our kids to be alone with babysitters, family and friends and do we question their intentions when they want to do something nice for our kids? Just because someone is being nice, doesn’t mean that they have ill intentions. Are we so paranoid that we can’t accept people being kind without accusing them or a horrendous crime?

I have a unique perspective on teacher-student relationships because my father was my mom’s professor in university. My dad always had students over at our home for dinner, to babysit, to help with assignments, a place to crash, to do our yard work, etc., and I think we grew up richer seeing how kindness spreads. When I was a kid, we had our teachers over for dinner and I learned that my teachers were to be respected but also could be counted on as someone who could help me. I can honestly say that I became friends with my teachers over the years, which was cemented during the year I was their student. I still think of those teachers as Mr. or Mrs. even though we’ve been on a first name basis since I turned 18. I babysat for my profs, I would go to their homes for dinner, and do odd jobs to pay for tuition. Shouldn’t we get to know our teachers on a more personal basis? They do spend (in many cases) more time with our children during the week than we do. As a teacher, I try to know my students on a more personal level but it’s hard to do when having a personal interest in them, elicits suspicion. In my career, I’ve been invited to a meal at a student’s home once: for a thank you appreciation lunch at the end of year with three of my colleagues who also taught the family’s children. It may be hard for the teacher to initiate a relationship with a family so why not start it by inviting him/her over for coffee?

Milo Moon, it sounds like the charter school that this teacher and your child are a part of are trying to make a caring learning community. That is a great thing.

However, it sounds like this particular mother did not read the small print (which was probably pretty large in their mission statement.) I would have to say, it sounds like this very proactive system is not the school that she should have her son in because it doesn’t fit with her beliefs.

As for the teachers/professors as friends…this was not an attempt at being a friend/equal. I get where this teacher is coming from. A child who is not doing their best in school can sometimes be helped by a teacher taking a special interest in them. If you read John Taylor Gatto, he has lots of examples of times that just showing that an adult cares, as an adult, (not equal) can make more of a difference in a child’s attitude toward learning than any amount of lectures or book learning.

Students are human. They have human emotions and needs. They have parents who are divorced, one parent sent overseas, siblings with cancer, parents who lost their jobs and are about to be homeless. Teachers are also human and can react and help students with their needs, based on their greater experience. This whole thing is why groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters got started. There is no reason that a teacher can’t be a mentor and still teach. It may actually make the students more interested in what is being taught.

And Lenore, I have to disagree. This is not a “teacher’s pet” issue. In my mind “teacher’s pet” is totally different – a smirking kid (with young kids) who is too helpful and tattling. An athlete with special privileges due to the ability to draw paying crowds for teams and won’t do any work because he knows he will get a pass. Not a disadvantaged kid whom a teacher is trying to be a mentor to.

“Why are some of you reading this blog if you have the need to know where your child is at every moment. Isn’t the free range goal to raise our children to be competent out on their own?”

I don’t need to know where my child is at all times. I do like to have expectations as to where my child may be at all times. I don’t think free range means turning your kids out at 7am and not giving a damn what happens to them until dinner time.

If my kid went to a school like Karen’s Sudbury School where the expectation is that children go off campus and grab burgers with teachers when the mood strikes, great. I don’t have a problem with that happening at all. My expectation as to my child’s day is that it’s flexible. She may be at school; she may not. If I need her for some reason during the day, I’m not shocked to find out she’s at the local BBQ with her English teacher.

However, if the school is a closed campus, as the one at issue seems to be, I kinda expect my child to actually be at school all day. I don’t appreciate the fact that someone circumvented the policy and took my child off campus without telling me or apparently anyone else in the school. Hanging out with my kid over a burger doesn’t raise any red flags. Removing my child from the school against school policy and without my permission does kinda raise some red flags. I’m sure this teacher was simply young and inexperienced, but there are some red flags in THIS scenario, although not in all scenarios involving kids leaving school to grab burgers with teachers.

Sera, wow you must go to the most sterile and unfriendly university in the world. I’m glad I didn’t go there. I went to a major state university so many core classes were huge. Professors didn’t interact with those students much outside of class. But the small major classes were often very friendly. I had professors we called by their first name in class. Professors who took us out for drinks or lunch. Professors who invited us to their homes. It just depended on the professor. I had a doctorate candidate for one literature class who invited the entire class to his house for beer, snacks and a viewing of Monte Python for his introduction to the middle ages every quarter. It was a blast.

I viewed my relationship with my college professors the same as I view my one with my boss. We are all adults. We socialize at times but still manage to keep it professional at work/school. Most grading was blind – a numerical code was on the paper, not a name – so distance in grading was easy to maintain.

I was at a party recently and met a young man who is an Eagle Scout (I’ll call him Scott). He talked about the achievement, and how even today, his response to people who ask, “Oh you were an Eagle Scout,” is, “No, I AM an Eagle Scout.” The achievement is such that you identify with it forever, even when you are not actively taking part in Scouting. And he’s not. Because of his age. Because of the suspicion.

Scott told me how after graduating high school, he attended a local community college and so was able to stay active with his troop and move into a more mentor-type role with the younger, upcoming scouts. Then he noticed something start to happen: parents were giving him ugly, suspicious looks when they dropped their sons at meetings. They began to question the scoutmaster about Scott’s presence. What was a twenty-something male doing loitering around scout meetings? Was his interest in the boys healthy? “Loitering?” the Scoutmaster replied indignantly, “Healthy?! This is an Eagle Scout!” But it made no difference. Nothing was said directly to Scott, but the underlying discomfort turned into hostility, and reached such a level that he eventually phased himself out of the troop entirely. And he cracked some jokes, but you could see the bitterness was still there.

Male teachers are suspect. Eagle Scouts are suspect. What’s next – we don’t trust soldiers around our kids? When a fireman busts through the door of a burning house to rescue a kid, we make him show ID?

Kids learn best from caring adults who take the time to help them learn about the world around them. Many schools have become factories that churn out groups of monolithic thinkers who learn how to march in line versus lead it. It’s been widely reported that personal attention focused on a child’s individual interest and ability leads to more successful kids.

Well, there are caring adults out there willing and more than happy to take a positive role in children’s lives – why stop them?

I understand parental concern (I see red flags everywhere too), but I also try to foster relationships with those people too. That way, it’s more of a community raising my child versus me handing her over to the school system to be responsible for her.

I used to work for a program that ran breakfast and after-school clubs in impoverished neighborhoods. I once took two of the children who attended the clubs, a 10-year-old boy and his 7-year-old sister for hot chocolate at Starbucks and a little tour of my college campus, shortly after their brother had been sent to prison (they already had one brother and their father in prison). I got permission from their mother and picked them up from their home (i.e. didn’t take them from one of the clubs), rode the bus with them to town, walked them around part of campus, took them Starbucks, and rode the bus back (all very public places). At the time I worked part-time for the non-profit as I was myself a student and I did lots of other part-time work babysitting so plenty of people in the community trusted me with their children on a one-to-one basis, many of them friends of this family.

My employer gave me a formal warning and threatened to fire me if I did anything similar in future. Even though I arranged the whole thing with the mother’s permission, stayed in public places, and was dealing with kids in a neighborhood I knew well and often babysat in. Because I met these particular kids at work my employer deemed it inappropriate that I spend time with them outside the clubs. The children and their mother were very upset that I had to refuse an invitation to dinner at their house (as a thank you for taking them out) or risk losing my job. Another worker at the clubs suggested to me that if the mother was onboard we could just tell the non-profit that they had decided to hire me as a babysitter (the family couldn’t actually afford to do this). That’s what we ended up doing so that I could go dinner at their house and take the children out a couple more times. I think it is completely ridiculous that a mother who trusted me with her children and appreciated a willing, positive role model in their life (I was the first in my family to go to college and her son was fascinated that I had made it to college from my background), essentially had her decisions over who her children could spend time with overruled by a business afraid of getting sued.

Larry, there is a ton of focus on trust and respect within the Sudbury community. Try Sudbury Valley School’s web site, or the Clearwater School’s blog, to get started. Peter Grey’s blog on Psychology Today is great. Check in on Liberating Kids’ Facebook page.

They drill you with fear of litigation in teachers’ college. Honestly, for every hour of useful instruction we got, there was at least another hour of fearmongering. We were told about the dangers of touching students, even a casual or reassuring hand on a shoulder. We were warned against hugging the little tykes. We were fed horror stories about lives ruined on both sides — kids who were taken advantage of, as well as teachers who were inappropriately accused. We had whole classes on legal responsibilities.

It horrified most of us, who got into teaching because we enjoy human interaction and kids in particular. If we’re going to go the robot route, then by all means just cut out the middle man and go to automated classrooms. It’s bad enough that kids these days hardly have any contact with adults as role models. They see their parents for only a few hours; they see us most of the day. But we’re not good role models for human interactions with restrictions like that on us! No wonder kids (and apparently whole generations of adults, judging by some of the comments on this blog and elsewhere) have grown up in fear and without any nuanced understanding of what it means to be a human being in a community of human beings.

With the (to my mind) nonsensical, efficiency-driven system of age apartheid in schools, most kids are completely unable to relate to anybody who is not exactly of their age. They have no opportunity to watch adult behaviour on a day to day basis, and learn what the differences are between childish and mature thought and actions. One of the biggest differences, I would have thought, is that children follow rules blindly, whereas mature minds learn to contextualise and use nuance in their decisions. Following rules is not decision making. It is the abnegation of the responsibility to think and feel as a human being should. Can we then blame them for poor decision making skills later? Life is rich and complex and demanding of full participation; alienation from these processes can only sicken and weaken us, mentally, spiritually, and physically.

When we see people who are capable of these skills, we recognise their worth. I’ve read that Atticus Finch is Americans’ greatest hero – more people relate to him than to Batman. We recognise and value those who can navigate complexity with nuance and humanity. Where do we see these skills explicitly valued in public life anymore? People could do a lot worse than ask “WWAFD?” when confronted with complexity.

Zero tolerance is a profoundly dehumanising policy. Robots, not humans, are programmed to respond only in a certain way to certain stimulus. The whole point of being human is that we are complex and have the faculty of reason, something that in previous ages was considered to be a shared faculty with angels. Milton would be appalled by our apparent rejection of our greatest gift. While I understand the power dynamic that exists between students and teachers, I reject the suggestion that it precludes normal human, emotional and social interaction. I can’t imagine the kind of alienation that thinking of my job as a kind of factory work would produce in me. My own humanity would be compromised, and that would have an effect on my students, some of whom remain friends a decade after I taught them. I like to think that both our lives are better for those interactions, and that can only have a positive effect on our communities.

What kind of a world would we like to live in? We have to figure that out, and then live our lives as if that place already exists. Waiting for others to change it, or listening to naysayers will never work.

I believe that when kids get to be about the age the student in this story is, they need a trusted non-parent adult in their lives, who can listen and give good advice without punishing them for being in an iffy situation. It can be an aunt or uncle, a neighbor, a friend’s parent — or it can be a teacher. I think the mom in this story is seriously overreacting. At the most, she should have discussed her concerns with the teacher and asked that it not happen again. What need is there to involve the media?

Since the subject of Sudbury schooling has come up several times, I’d like to offer a view of how the staff/student relationship in Sudbury schools benefit children enormously in their ability to be free-range. I’ve been working at a Sudbury school for 4 years.

The staff role (we sometimes “teach” but we also role-model, mentor, friend, guide, advise, learn (from students) and collaborate so we do not call ourselves teachers) is on an equal footing with the students in that everyone has an equal vote in running the school–rules, policies, budget etc. Indeed, the staff goes up for election each year and the students vote whether we should continue to be on staff. The ages are also free to mix and interact all through the day.

The students are respected and their interests are taken seriously in an authentic way (not a inspirational poster on the wall kind of way). They learn great communication and social skills this way, and most importantly, learn to advocate for themselves. They learn to listen to their inner voice if something doesn’t feel right, and they learn that they can and should speak up to adults. They aren’t reprimanded, told to be quiet, sent to the principal’s office, given a “red” light status or in trouble for challenging an adult. They are valued for speaking up.

We feel developing this confidence and wherewithal will help our children stay safer than any amount of helicoptering could possibly provide.

Sudbury Schools tell parents that the way their child spends their day at school is their child’s business. During the school hours, parents are essentially paying us not to tell them what their children are doing. Their children are practicing independence in a reliable, lawful community. We are flowing directly opposite to the tidal trends of parent over-involvement, fear and micro-managing.

I agree that the few minutes spent with the teacher getting a hamburger was perhaps more valuable than any math tutoring or grammar worksheet help for that student. At most, a reminder to ‘please sign out next time in accordance with our rules’ would’ve been all it took, and the teacher should continue to use his compassion, wisdom (even a youthful wisdom), intuition to make a difference in a child’s life.

I don’t mean to high jack the post, but Peter, our school would honor family field trips even during the school day as an “excused absence.” School and family are different entities; we don’t tell people to have “Sudbury homes,” just the opposite.

You ARE involved in your children’s education.You can’t help but be your child’s most important teacher. Learning happens all the time.

What’s wrong with learning about your child’s day from them, although it’s hard to answer, “What did you do today? What did you learn today” everyday. I wouldn’t always want to have to report back on a flowing, idiosyncratic, meandering day with evidence of having “learned something” at the end of MY day.

Some parents do volunteer, offer workshops but they need to be in tune with the learning environment and have to offer something that students want.

Sorry that’s the way it needs to be now days . Teachers should not have personal relationships with children outside the classroom. Everyone knows this. The teacher was probably acting without thinking but should have known better.

Susan, Why does it need to be this way now days? That is not the way I want it to be. If the rules and liabilities push this way, then that is what needs to change.

It is not good for the children. It is not good for any of us.

Caroline, Hijack away. I think it is directly on topic. Since Sudbury has students voting on rules, how much variance is there from school to school? Is the privacy all an outgrowth of the difficulties of reporting on what you learned today with such a freeform day?

When I was in high school in the late 90’s our debate team was coached and sponsored by the local Kiwanis. We went to breakfast with them at the local buffet place once a month and our coach, Mr. Smith, took the team to Mackinac Island for the state championships. We stayed in hotels with him for other tournaments around the state. It never once occurred to anyone that he would do anything improper and he never did. He was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.

My high school English teacher would invite some of her AP English students to her home for dinner at the end of the year. Nobody ever thought that improper. We were just impressed she’d want students to come to her house for a social event.

We thought of these people as the teachers we wanted to have. They are the ones I still tell people about because they made an impact on my life and went above and beyond to connect with their students. I hate to see paranoia prevent teachers from actually making a real connection with their students.

I wanted to join Key Club in high school, but I wasn’t able to get there. The Key Club meetings were held 30 minutes before school started. I was a bus rider because my parents left for work at 5 a.m. The bus didn’t get me to school until right before school started, so the only way I was getting to Key Club was if I got a ride.

The teacher in charge of Key Club stopped one morning every month to pick me up from my driveway and take me to the Key Club meetings. Luckily, I lived along her route to the school, so it wasn’t a huge inconvenience, but she took on that role.

If she hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have been able to be in Key Club until my senior year, when I was allowed to drive to school. I never really became ‘friends’ with this teacher, but I was so grateful that she was willing to pick up a kid just so said kid could be in a club.

“I hate to see paranoia prevent teachers from actually making a real connection with their students.”

I agree, but in this case I think it’s the paranoia on this board that is the problem. We’ve made a complaint about taking a child out of school without his mother’s consent into an issue of pedophilia and fear of adults having any contact with kids.

The only comment made by the mother involved her child leaving school without anyone knowing. At no point did she bring up pedophilia or worries that the child was being groomed. She didn’t state that her children are not allowed to share a meal or socialize with their teachers ever. She’d just prefer the teachers not take them on impromptu jaunts around town during the school day and she’d prefer the teachers not teach her kids to break the rules whenever it suits them. You may disagree that teachers should need permission to take kids off campus but I don’t think that’s an overly helicopter request. Back in the free-wheeling 70s, permission slips were signed for every off campus excursion in my life. Even the kids who left school for lunch, only did so after their parents signed the yearly permission form. It’s not a new or strange concept that kids don’t leave school without permission from parents (either specific or just general understanding).

When we fail to separate the valid concerns from the paranoid fears, we – the people on this board – run the risk of creating the exact environment we want to avoid. We make it about issues that were not even raised in the initial information.

I rarely disagree with Lenore, but without more information, I’m on the side of the mother and school that the actions of the teacher lacked good judgment, not in seeking to make a connection with a student but in taking him out of school against school policy to do it.

“Seems there’s more than just free-range kids, and helicopter parents. There are run-wild kids that are just out on their own, that someone needs to take an interest in. So whaddyathink?”

I agree. However, not a single example provided by you or Lenore or just about anyone else involved taking a child somewhere against the rules and without anyone knowing. They all involved prearranged plans with the parents permission. “Don’t take kids out of school without parental permission” does not actually equal “never form a caring, mentoring relationship with a child ever again you wretched pedophile.” They are actually two different concepts. Both prevalent in society right now but we have no indication that this situation if an example of the later and not the former. Why is it that we are always saying not to assume the worst of people first but then assume the worst first from this very cryptic article?

Nobody accused this teacher of being a pedophile. He wasn’t fired. There is no indication from the article that he is being prevented from bonding with kids at school or outside with parental permission. (That may be happening but I can’t tell from the short article). In fact, it appears that mentoring is a goal of the school from someone’s description above. I guess I just don’t see why this is comment-worthy without more information.

@Donna- I have to agree with you that too often we assume the worst (or the best) from an article or story. There is often more to the story that is not reported or missed so too often people take what is reported as factual information. Most schools have parents sign on a yearly basis a registration form to verify their information is correct. There is also on this form a checklist of things that parents give permission for (children’s photos to be published, administer KI pill, permission for field trips within a 5km radius, etc.). Most parents just send it back to school signed and don’t update their information nor check over this list. Most aren’t aware that this list exists and just check off yes for everything (including the answer that most pople would check off no for-my child can leave the school alone in the event of a school closure). I wonder if this school also has this same form and the parent had already given permission but wasn’t aware (which the media wouldn’t report because then there would be no story!).

I am really surprised by the majority of comments by posters here who self identify as “Free Range Parents”.

Would have guessed you would all have been outraged by the teacher taking the child out of school for just a few minutes.

My impression was that most Free Range Parents really do let their children leave the house with the only limit being ” come back home when the street lights go on”., fully trusting their children to be able to make decisions about where they should go and what they should do.

I truly thought most of you have no idea exactly where your children are most of the day, and are okay with that because you have confidence in your children and trust their judgement.

Your responses on this issue was a surprise as I expected you would stay in line with Lenore’s point of view. .

Interesting

@ Cheryl W Yes I hear you & agree.

“teacher says that she has risked her job many times giving kids hugs or holding and rocking them on her lap because they were: homeless, a parent got shipped overseas, they were taken from their home and put in foster care, mom has cancer…the list goes on.”

It is a shame that the rules had to change because of the terrible things a minority of adults have done. Being a woman, I would probably do the same thing as your teacher friend. However if I was a male teacher I wouldn’t – too risky , much more likely to be misinterpreted. Plus most sex offenders are male.

Susan, I’m not outraged over the teacher taking the child from school for a few minutes. It was a bad judgment call because there appears to be a rule in place against it and it is against the expectations of most parents whose kids attend school, not because there is anything wrong with taking a kid for a burger.

If I could pick the perfect school, I’d prefer that my child attend school with an open campus where kids are allowed to go get burgers with whomever they want at lunch. But, unfortunately, that doesn’t describe most schools. Teachers should not be teaching children that it’s okay to flaunt the “don’t leave campus” rule and grab a burger whenever the mood strikes (kids figure out how to ditch school all on their own).

I’m simply not agreeing with Lenore that this is some indication of the pedophilia phobia gripping this country.

I should add that I think the teacher made a simple mistake but should be reprimanded for not obtaining prior permission. (As is what happened.) Perhaps he didn’t think to because they weren’t going out to eat, merely running to pick up lunch to take back to school, and it all happened in the span of a few minutes. The mother is the one calling for his firing, but I think her motives are less about her son’s safety and more to do with publicity.

CrazyCatLady,

I know what you mean in situations where children either have absent parents of either gender. Our hearts naturally go out to them and they desperately need a caring adult or even just the comfort of a hug or a pat.

However I think everyone also understands rules limiting physical contact and limits on being “alone” with a child. Because it is so difficult to pre-identify sexual predators all people working with children need to restrict the types of contact they have. It is very sad to not be able to give a hug to a child who seems to need one.

But damage sexual predators inflict on their victims lasts their whole lives.

It would be wonderful if there was another way to protect children from this issue, while not depriving some children from contact they crave.

All that said, I agree that this topic is an offshoot of the title of the inflammatory blog post title, and does not appear to have been at issue in the school incident in question.

Yes this blog post itself looks like it is guilty of fanning the flames of fear – actually attempting to create paranoia where none existed?

Why would the owner of a blog that fights paranoid thinking write a blog post that incites paranoia?

Let’s imagine for a moment that this is a story about a teacher that violated a rule about getting a permission slip. A rule no more important than a child shouldn’t leave the classroom to go to the bathroom without the teachers permission. The rule was violated. A reporter found out, and wrote a newspaper story about it.

Hmm. Don’t see it happening. Without the background events of abuse by teachers, priests, and coaches, this doesn’t rise to the level of news.

“Teacher took child off school grounds on a different day than expected. News at eleven.” Nope. I don’t see it.

The public’s perception of risks, because of news stories of actual abuse, is exaggerated vastly beyond the actual risks. This over reaction is what I am pushing against. We now have a result where millions of students are tought in an environment of fear. I can’t comfort a child because someone may get the wrong idea. I am one misunderstood observation away from being a news story or worse. The vast majority of teachers are not evil.

The vigilance with rules and liability worries, harms our kids. Real harm, not some chance at harm. You think you are protecting that small group of kids from that awful situation; you probably aren’t. Instead we are robbing millions of children of authentic interactions that shape their views of the world.

We have thrown the babies out with the bath water.

Actually, I don’t think we hear a bit about this story without it being the son of a candidate for governor. Everytime the child of a candidate messes up during an election year we hear about and more is made about it than it really is. If the teacher had been John Smith, son of nobody you’ve ever heard of, there would not have been an article.

And, in this case, nobody overreacted except Lenore. It is clear the focus of this story has always been about taking a kid from school without permission. That’s it. It has never been about pedophilia or fear of this teacher. He was reprimanded for what he did wrong but the punishment fit the “crime.”

It all boils down to what is “appropriate” and who makes that call? One person’s appropriate behavior may not exactly be another’s. To me, if I had known the teacher and trusted him/her (obviously since they are the ones watching my kid during that time), I would have been ok with this. Especially for the simple fact that I trust my child even more, to know what to do if he was inappropriately dealt with. Back in my days at elementary school, this kind action would have been fine with the parents. For one main reason, because all the parents KNEW their kids’ teachers. That is what Parent-Teacher meetings are for. Not sure if they do those these days. There were teachers at my elementary school that did have “teacher’s pets”. The children who exemplified a good student where treated with extra appreciation. Not to say the other children were treated less, but with certain situations the “brighter” students where made “team leaders”, or were treated to treats. Usually by making it like a reward system. So when the other kids see this, they know that if they excelled as well that they would get the same rewards. And it worked. There were usually more than one student who became “teacher’s pets”. And we were all taken for milkshakes, burgers, fries, pizza. All out of the pocket of our teacher. Most of these places were just down the street from our school. And the procedure would be no different than a field trip. I don’t ever remember, our teachers asking for permission. It was just a given. As long as it was during recess or lunch. There was a level of trust from the parents and the principle.

Even in high school back in the 80s, we had teachers that were cool and did things with some of their students. All of this, to me, played a huge part in our growth as students. School was hard enough with all the cliques and bullies. It was nice to know there were teachers we could call friends, even mentors. Many of us learned to deal with the negative side of growing up in school because of some teachers, who took that extra care and time for their students. On top of the positive influence from home, this just made me grow up faster, and be smarter in all aspects of life at a very early age. Again, what is the difference now than back then? Other than the fact that crime rate, and crimes against children are much lower now than ever before? Yes, there are incidences of teachers taking advantage of their students, but those are isolated incidences spread across this vast earth. And statistically account for much less than people fear. As I always say, this all has to do about how the parents feel, their fears, and less to do about their children. Remember, teach your children to protect themselves. That is the best way to making sure they are kept safe. It gives them confidence, less fear, heightens their intuition and awareness, and gives the a sense of accomplishment and responsibility. Too many parents deny their children these given right to grow positively, just so they feel better about themselves and their decisions.

God. Teachers are human beings; teaching requires a human connection. This whole notion that teachers need to be superior is silly to me (I’m a teacher.) Tell me, for instance, how I’m supposed to communicate the virtues of democracy and freedom, from my stance as an authoritarian dictating right and wrong from the front of the classroom?

On the main topic…jeez. Sometimes you have to wonder how the hell the world got to be this way. “The teacher spent time with my child…evil…he’s totally not a role model.” Apparently, to be a role model means not giving a damn.

I wouldn’t be okay with a teacher or anyone I don’t know taking my child anywhere without letting anyone else know where they were. Not okay, ever. The teacher is in the wrong here. I normally agree with Lenore on things, but in this instance I think the mother had every right to not be okay with the situation. Doesn’t sound to me like she was being overly paranoid. IMO there’s a big difference between being free range and giving your kids freedom and realizing not everyone in the world is out to get you….and between not caring at all about the welfare of your child or who they are with. The line there might be thin, but it’s there.

Cathy- who do you think took the story to the media in the first place? The school? Nope, has to be an official press release from the board office (and why would they want to bring more attention to the situation). The mayor’s son? Nope-he’s probably fed up with the whole situation and wishes it never happened. The kid? Possibly… Or the mom? Bingo! Parents can go cry what they want to the media and think it will help their situation. I feel really sorry for their kids to have parents who can’t solve a problem without calling in the media to solve it for them.

I think it’s really sad that, because of Jerry Sandusky, “good parents” must now be suspicious of every adult in our children’s lives. I would have had a VERY hard time sending my kids to school every day if I believed that none of the adults there were trustworthy and if I didn’t have faith in their decision-making.

Also, I read a lot about how teachers/coaches etc can’t ever be alone with a child; that there are specific rules designed to ensure that this never happens. My question is – how do private music lessons happen? My daughter took oboe and piano lessons with private teachers, all alone in their studios. It’s been several years since she aged out of lessons so I’m curious as to how it is done now.

Oh come on! My 6th grade Sunday School teacher was a “big sister” to my twin and myself. Horseback riding, sleepovers, swimming, we had a ball! And in high school, a couple of my teachers took me to lunch on two separate occasions. Once for my birthday (I think) and the other was a farewell dinner. My parents approved 100%.

The term emotional incest is fantastic. The problem is not only kids only associating with kids. It is adults only reading blogs or media that agrees with them. It’s kids only getting to spend time with kids that are the same age. Our whole society divides itself into these little groups instead of living as a community where there are things we like, things we don’t and all sorts of fascinating differences that make life more interesting.

I would trust my instincts on this one. If I trusted the teacher, no big deal, just get permission next time. If in my gut I didn’t feel right about the teacher it would be a much bigger deal to me.

@ Peter –

How exactly do you 100% control having your child being taught by someone your guts tells you isn’t right? I suppose you could homeschool but that is not feasible and/or desirable for the vast majority of people in the world (otherwise they’d be homeschooling now as this is not some super-secret method of schooling). If you choose to make use of other schooling options, you just don’t have that much control over the schools hiring and firing practices.

Nor should you, because you truly only want, YOUR gut feelings to matter. You would be very unhappy if your child’s favorite teacher, a wonderful teacher by any criteria, got fired because the overactive gut of some helicopter parent says that something is off with this teacher because she gave a hug to a student who needed one. Who’s guts are going to be running the show? The loudest, most hysterical guts of course.

“Guts” are not evidence of wrong-doing. Nor are “guts” consistent. And allegations about “guts” can be easily faked. Don’t like the teacher because she gave your kid a C? Insist that your “gut” tells you something is off. Some parents are willing to hold their children back in school, get them diagnosed with learning disabilities that don’t exist, do their homework for them, hire consultants to do their homework for them and manipulate the system to their child’s advantage any way they can. Other parents get hysterical over little things. I’m currently annoyed at my kid’s teacher because I picked my kid up at school at the end of the day and she had a 102.5 fever. That didn’t happen the second before I picked my kid up and my kid is telling me that she told the teacher she didn’t feel well. I will calmly talk to the, otherwise good teacher, tomorrow about the situation. Other parents would be screaming for the teacher’s head. Getting a teacher fired or students moved between classes because your “gut” says so should not be easy.

Why on earth is one-on-one tutoring risky? And please don’t say “because anything can happen”.

“I think getting your child moved to another class based on your gut, isn’t the same problem as trying to fire a teacher based on your gut.”

I agree that it’s a lesser result but the same problems exist. Teacher gave your child a B? Say your gut tells you that the teacher is off to get your kid moved. Your kid not the class favorite? Say your gut tells you that the teacher is off to get your kid moved. Teacher not doing what you want? Say your gut tells you that the teacher is off to get your kid moved.

The school doesn’t have time to move kids from class to class at the mere request of every parent – which is all saying “my gut tells me something is off” with no further evidence is. The teachers in my child’s school don’t all teach the same thing at the same time. Overall the same material is learned by each class each year but the order and means varies by teacher. The teachers shouldn’t have to deal with the challenges of integrating a new student every time some parent requests that their child be moved to a different class. Further, the move of one kid many necessitate the move of another. Classrooms are very delicately balanced. By law, they must contain a certain racial, age and sex mixture as dictated by the local population.

And while moving classes may be feasible in K-5 (if there is more than one class of each grade which there may not be in small school), it may not be a possibility 6-12. Now you are talking about rearranging entire schedules. To accommodate your one “gut,” you may have to move 6 or 7 different classes. And what if that is the only teacher who teaches a required course? Do you now get to claim exemption from entire graduation requirement at your mere request? That’s not going to get abused at all. Every parent won’t suddenly have gut feelings about their kid’s trig (or whatever class that kid sucks at) teacher.

Sorry, but if you want to have so much control over your child’s schooling such that any request for class moves without substantiating a reason are expected to be honored, you clearly need to homeschool.

“Why on earth is “I bought a student in my class a hamburger for lunch that we ate back at the school with others.” a reason for regret?”

Because the child left the school against school rules. The school is a closed campus, meaning students cannot leave at anytime during the day. The teacher can leave for burgers, but the student broke the rules by leaving. He only broke the rules because he was encouraged to by a teacher. Most parents are not going to be thrilled with this aspect of the situation. I’m not saying that the school should fire him or take a serious action (and they didn’t), but I’d appreciate it as a parent if the teachers don’t make my parenting job harder by showing my kid that it’s okay to break the rules and leave campus for a burger when the mood strikes.

Why don’t schools allow kids to go for burgers for lunch? That I don’t know, but most don’t and that’s the world we live in. Until the rules are changed, there are penalties for not following them. You can decide that something is worth the consequences but you don’t get to break the rules without consequence just because you think the rule is stupid.

I agree with your free range parenting premise. and I also agree that people should not freak out and be paranoid of perversion (that helps no one). But, I also worry when people that have no experience with sexual abuse and are uneducated on the issue seem to be creating an environment that is hostile towards people who were sexually abused and people who do work in the field trying to find solutions to the problem because it is a big problem. So, all I ask is that when you discuss these issues to please keep in mind that sexual abuse does happen, the people you see in the news that were raped as children are actually real human beings that exist. And a lot of your readers were also sexually abused as children, and no one protected them, or looked out for them, they were too small and too young to stop the offender. Your whole premise is that you want children to have a childhood and I can tell you the most effective way of killing a childhood is for them to be subjected to sex abuse. So, if people take training in awareness and prevention of sexual abuse maybe they will be less scared. They will be properly educated, and not feel so vulnerable and uncertain. And when you talk about the sex abuse issues, remember that it is real human beings that experience it, and they are listening and reading. You say that we should just teach our kids to defend themselves and fight back. I agree, but remember some children will not be able to do that and should not feel it is their fault because a 6 year old child is no match for an adult (emotionally, intellectually, developmentally, or physically). I tried to fight back when I was a child and it just made the assaults be more violent. The cases you talk about of parents freaking out are also rare news stories. Which one happens more: children being sexually assaulted or crazy people freaking out about? Just don’t forget to apply logic to your own conclusions. Why are some parents concerned about sexual abuse? Because it happened to them. So, don’t forget compassion about people’s experiences beyond your own. One thing is that the majority of kids that are abused will be abused in their own home by a parent/step-parent/relative/family friend. So, if parents can be aware and not overlook other kinds of abuse that is a good step towards keeping kids safe. And we should have open lines of communication with our children, so they are comfortable talking about embarrassing subjects and seeking help either from us or from a teacher. I’m not in disagreement with you. I just want you and others to know it is real human beings that experience sex abuse and it is devastating, and we were forced to keep it secret. So, don’t worry about people speaking openly and honestly about sex abuse. That helps solve the problem.

Thanks, Krista!

I don’t feel that way. I have not encountered that. I’m sorry you have. That’s awful. I encounter the exact opposite, everyone is always talking about forgiveness and compassion. Very surprised to read that.

I’m just going to say right now that after reading your response (once fallen) and seeing your site, I will not get into a fight with you. That’s not what I’m here for. Not here and not anywhere. I don’t fight with strangers and trolls on the internet.

@My First Skool, if it is truly the case that a teacher has “pedo-symptoms”, whatever they are, protecting the child would mean taking him/her out of the class or out of the school…right? Eating lunch together would pale in comparison to your child being in class with this allegedly pedo teacher every day. Right?

I’m a thirtysomething woman, and I volunteer at a small Orthodox Jewish girl’s high school. During the height of Chanukah shopping season, I was at the mall and saw three of “my girls” shopping. I asked them if they needed a ride home, and they very gratefully accepted, saying that otherwise they’d have to drag their boarding parents out of the house at a late hour in cold weather to pick them up. They had me in stitches the whole way home and it was a positive experience for all concerned. Friends of mine who teach and volunteer at larger, secular-based schools have said that they’d be in serious trouble for doing the same thing.

I just think that rationality gets thrown out the window when someone says, “There’s no harm in looking out for kids because sometimes people are pedophiles” gets met with suggesting they remove their children from school. Where is the productivity and logic in that conversation?

Anyhow, as a side note, I do think that people who were sexually abused as children are less fearful of pedophilia because we actually have experienced the manipulation as children, so we have more of an idea of what to look out for. We know it when we see it and we don’t just see it everywhere. We can also recognize genuine kindness when we see it.

If you want to know what pedo-symptoms are click on some of the web sites of the people on this comment thread, and you will find a web site for a book by a confessed, convicted, jail time served, now on the sex offender registry. Click on the book and read the chapter summaries. He is the one making derogatory comments about sex abuse survivors.

There is a middle ground between being overly fearful and completely ignorant to the actual reality of sex abuse. Neither extreme is a good place to be.

I’m sorry. Maybe I had trouble understanding you. It was not my intention to upset you. I truly do apologize. Best wishes to you.