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I work in a US urban charter school that's in danger of losing its charter because it fails financially and academically. 75% of its students are growing up wi

by delish 12y ago

I work in a US urban charter school that's in danger of losing its charter because it fails financially and academically. 75% of its students are growing up without regular contact with their fathers, 25% without their mothers, and more than 10% are designated homeless (this means they've moved more than 4 times in a year; the state defines this designation). The teachers are close with the students; we hear stories that tell us who has a really hard childhood. I can emphatically tell you that the harder the student's life is, the more misbehavior they exhibit and the more unhealthy they appear. By "appear" I mean weight, smell, visible grime, cuts and burns, these sorts of things. Here is a list of signs of child abuse: http://www.safehorizon.org/page/10-signs-of-child-abuse-58.html http://www.safehorizon.org/page/10-signs-of-child-abuse-58.h... Here are signs you might not see as abuse when you come across them: thumb-sucking, fear of going home, body odor. Each of those is easy to criticize or fix: "Get that thumb out of your mouth." "What do you mean you don't want to go home and watch [TV show they've mentioned]?" "[behind their backs] so-and-so stinks." (put a ":)" after each of those criticisms to see how they could be jokes or a caring statements, depending on tone. Still, they don't go far enough in addressing the underlying problem) Those criticisms identify the wrong signifier for their sign. The signifier is not sheer childishness (in the case of thumbsucking), but a coping mechanism for abuse.

sandworm 12y ago
Those definitions remind me of when I was caught in the school library after hours and out of uniform. The teacher who "caught" me freaked out on seeing cuts all over my legs. I had just been mountaineering the day before, which explained the cuts. But the real joke was that I couldn't go home. It was a boarding school. To her credit, she thought I was a day student too afraid to go home. Not to her credit, she should have talked to me or the teacher who took a group of us climbing BEFORE launching an investigation. I was bored with the common rooms and just wanted to read a book. Where I got and hid the keys she never found out.
- hamstergene 12y ago
  This reminds me of a story when child services were called on a family because the child had scratches on her arms from playing with cat. Isn't it also bad for a normal child to see out of nowhere unknown people, laywer and their parents scared sh*tless?
- DanBC 12y ago
  Report early, report often, is a good idea. There are countless examples of children who were brutally murdered because individual agencies did their own poor quality investigations before deciding not to report their concerns to child protection social services; if those social workers had the full range of complaints from police and teachers and other agencies then the child would still be alive today and the parents would not be free to abuse the child.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    The problem is that because the front line reports and trusts the back line to investigate, and then the back line jumps to conclusions by assuming the front line only reports serious problems. Same problem when cops arrest and trust the lawyers, lawyers prosecute because they trust the cops, and juries convict because they trust the lawyers, and no one actually engages in critical thinking.
cbd1984 12y ago
> fear of going home Anyone who doesn't see this as a sign of abuse is an idiot. I could have sugar-coated that, but some things need to be said outright. (It's not a surefire sign of abuse, but if it doesn't qualify as a strong piece of evidence to you, your brain is not working correctly.)
- vertex-four 12y ago
  Nobody wants to see abuse - humans rationalise it as something that happens far away from them, not something that happens to people they interact with on a daily basis.
- delish 12y ago
  You don't have to be a superhuman listener to hear what's being said when a student looks you in the eye with tears and says, "I don't wanna go home." But you do have to be a superhuman listener when you have a thousand things on your mind, several students out of arm's reach yelling at each other, some students leaving the building without permission and without bus passes, etc etc--and then you see a marooned student who looks like he/she doesn't want to go home. Ultimately, if you're working one-on-one with a student who says he/she doesn't want to go home, in theory all you have to be is caring and curious, to help. But when you're in a public or charter school and you're always occupied you'll benefit from training (in e.g. crisis prevention), and sensitization to those key phrases. Those two things plus experience lead to intuition.

by delish 12y ago

sandworm 12y ago

Those definitions remind me of when I was caught in the school library after hours and out of uniform. The teacher who "caught" me freaked out on seeing cuts all over my legs. I had just been mountaineering the day before, which explained the cuts. But the real joke was that I couldn't go home. It was a boarding school. To her credit, she thought I was a day student too afraid to go home. Not to her credit, she should have talked to me or the teacher who took a group of us climbing BEFORE launching an investigation. I was bored with the common rooms and just wanted to read a book. Where I got and hid the keys she never found out.

hamstergene 12y ago
This reminds me of a story when child services were called on a family because the child had scratches on her arms from playing with cat. Isn't it also bad for a normal child to see out of nowhere unknown people, laywer and their parents scared sh*tless?
DanBC 12y ago
Report early, report often, is a good idea. There are countless examples of children who were brutally murdered because individual agencies did their own poor quality investigations before deciding not to report their concerns to child protection social services; if those social workers had the full range of complaints from police and teachers and other agencies then the child would still be alive today and the parents would not be free to abuse the child.
- sukilot 12y ago
  The problem is that because the front line reports and trusts the back line to investigate, and then the back line jumps to conclusions by assuming the front line only reports serious problems. Same problem when cops arrest and trust the lawyers, lawyers prosecute because they trust the cops, and juries convict because they trust the lawyers, and no one actually engages in critical thinking.

cbd1984 12y ago

> fear of going home Anyone who doesn't see this as a sign of abuse is an idiot. I could have sugar-coated that, but some things need to be said outright. (It's not a surefire sign of abuse, but if it doesn't qualify as a strong piece of evidence to you, your brain is not working correctly.)

vertex-four 12y ago
Nobody wants to see abuse - humans rationalise it as something that happens far away from them, not something that happens to people they interact with on a daily basis.
delish 12y ago
You don't have to be a superhuman listener to hear what's being said when a student looks you in the eye with tears and says, "I don't wanna go home." But you do have to be a superhuman listener when you have a thousand things on your mind, several students out of arm's reach yelling at each other, some students leaving the building without permission and without bus passes, etc etc--and then you see a marooned student who looks like he/she doesn't want to go home. Ultimately, if you're working one-on-one with a student who says he/she doesn't want to go home, in theory all you have to be is caring and curious, to help. But when you're in a public or charter school and you're always occupied you'll benefit from training (in e.g. crisis prevention), and sensitization to those key phrases. Those two things plus experience lead to intuition.