This is by far the hardest post I've ever had to write. And by far the most important, too.
When it comes to things like child abuse and pedophiles, these are usually the things you read about in the news. Everybody shakes their heads in disgust, hopes the culprit(s) get hanged (preferably by their private parts), and - I daresay - most teachers hope it never becomes an issue in their classroom or school, and then they go back to getting those lesson plans finished.
It's a majorly different issue when you get first-hand exposure to some of these nightmares through your experience in an educational setting oriented around younger learners. Just remembering such experiences is usually enough to have me throwing up (or at least wanting to) - not just in reaction to the fact that these things can and DO happen to children (and children that YOU know/knew), but more so when you see some of the reactions to such monstrous incidences, and realise how relatively powerless you can be to prevent them or fix them. They have been the cause of recurring nightmares for me - the truly awesomely scary ones; the ones that make you wake up drenched in sweat, with tears in your eyes and (sometimes) a clenched sob in your throat.
It's probably best I just throw these out on the table for you. Warning 1: It's not for the faint-hearted, or people who feel educational blog-browsing is all about focusing purely on positives or reading witty funny articles or finding material resources. Warning 2: If you teach children, or are responsible for programs that involve teaching children, you should read this.
NIGHTMARE 1:
In my first year of full time teaching in a foreign context (in a culture vastly different to my own - as this experience in particular was to crush home to me), a very bright and cheerful 6 year-old girl brought me a picture she'd been doing in class as part of a free-drawing exercise. The front was the usual merry, funny, bright picture most girls like to draw given the chance. She looked around to make sure no other students were close, and then turned the picture over for me.
The back was smeared completely in thick black pencil strokes, except for an open doorway, in which stood a black faceless figure with horns and tail. The figure had male genitalia drawn in graphic detail, showing a state of sexual arousal, and the figure was defecating and urinating simultaneously onto the floor.
After some time of speechless shock, I asked her what the picture was of. She said: "My bedroom." The perennial smile was nowhere to be seen. The huge dark eyes were downcast, fixed on her slowly shuffling feet.
She wanted me to keep the picture. I asked her if I could show it to some other people, and she said yes.
Straight after the lesson, I did two things. First, I went and vomited in the bathroom. Then I cleaned myself up and took the picture directly to the private institute's director.
Now, I'm no child psychiatrist, but in terms of a child reaching out to tell a teacher that something very evil was happening in her home life, I don't think it gets much more obvious than this. The director, on the other hand, instructed me to throw the picture in the trash. Immediately. It was "just a joke" and/or "just an overactive imagination after seeing something on television she shouldn't have." What followed was an argument that went from gentle to rather ugly, and finished in an ultimatum: Tear up the picture and throw it in the trash now, or look for a new job.
The course of the argument revealed that this child's father was considered one of the most prominent dentists in the entire city. He was also an important member of the director's all-important social circle of wealthy and influential professional 'citizens.'
In that context at that time, given the school sponsored my work visa, "look for a new job" essentially meant "you'll be on a plane home within the week - and you can look for a new job there, because you won't be permitted to come back here and teach for a full calendar year." It was also a place and time when a school director could come up with pretty much any reason to fire you, and it was hard to fight your case in court when you had already been deported out of the country.
I really did seriously consider doing just that - anything but turn my back and pretend the problem wasn't there (or at least needed some serious investigation). In the end, I handed the picture over to the director and said "I've done my job here. I think there is a good chance this child is being abused at home. Judging by the look on your face when I showed you this, you feel the same way but won't admit it." I handed him the picture and said "You can do what you feel needs to be done from here, because it's YOUR responsibility now, and it's on YOUR conscience." And I walked out.
I didn't lose my job. I never heard anything more about it. But I also never stopped remembering it, never stopped feeling nauseous. Never stopped feeling incredibly angry and sad about it.
And never stopped feeling guilty.
It's all very well to say that I was just a powerless foreigner in a culture that would go to almost any lengths to protect reputations and maintain important relationships, or even to note that the police in that country already had a reputation for staying as far away from these sorts of "family issues" as possible. I had just played the role of a colossal betrayer to a little girl who was quite possibly living the worst nightmare imaginable.
It really isn't (and shouldn't be) possible to forgive oneself for that.
NIGHTMARE 2:
Some time later, in the same country but at a different school, I was Academic Coordinator in charge of a small team of teachers. We had a new teacher on staff, and from day 1 he was creepy. A couple of local female teachers approached me with complaints that he was "stalking" them, following them into rooms for no apparent reason, touching them in unnecessary ways, etc.
I dealt with these issues very quickly, figuring he was just a bit of a sleaze. He stopped "harrassing" the female staff, and all seemed good - despite the fact the sense of creepiness just never left.
A little later, he came to my office with a really unusual request. He wanted permission from me to meet up with some boys from his classes outside school hours, to just "you know, hang out down the park, throw a frisbee, that sort of thing." This was totally against my teacher-student relationship policies, and I told him so, trying to be nice about it (figuring he just wanted to be a "fun" teacher - many of his actions up to that point hinted at a desperate need to be liked and admired).
That should have been the end of it, but a week later he came to me with the same request again, only delivered a little more passionately. It was at about this time that some of the hairs on the back of my neck started to rise. Discussion revealed some disturbing elements:
1. He only wanted to "play outside" with boys, and boys who were under 12.
2. He didn't want anyone else accompanying him.
3. He didn't want the school owner to know about it, and he didn't want me to tell any other teachers about it ("Surely it could just be between you and I, you know - don't want to make anyone else jealous or worried, right?").
I repeated the "no"- much more emphatically this time. Further investigation on my part revealed that the boys in question, who he'd claimed were the ones all up for this extra-curricular time together with their teacher on the weekend, were in fact of the opinion that this was completely the teacher's idea.
I did a little more digging, and found out that some of the details mentioned on this teacher's resume didn't stack up (the finer details you wouldn't normally think to investigate - and my boss, who did the hiring and firing, almost never dug beyond the picture and scanned copies of passport and university degree). The picture that was forming wasn't a very nice one at all.
Some time later, we had to fire him based on some strong complaints from students and fellow teachers that he had a bizarre temper and made them feel constantly uncomfortable.
So, okay, there might not have been anything actually sinister in this teacher's motives - he could have just been a social fruit-loop. It's not a nightmare to compare with the one I've already documented above (though brace yourself for the one that follows...), but it did scare the absolute willies out of me.
Some good actually came out of this experience for me as a manager of teachers and private school programs:
1. I started encouraging my bosses/school owners to do criminal record checks for all new teachers (years before it was ever talked about as an official requirement in that particular teaching context), even though they never did (and the owners usually did all the hiring and firing - usually through a recruiter). I also educated myself a bit more about these sorts of issues and became a founding sponsor for the Happy Schools movement.
2. I made teacher-student relationship do's and don'ts explicit at the commencement of all teaching positions.
3. I started a policy whereby all classroom doors had to be open while teaching, and no teachers were permitted to be alone in a room with a single child at any time.
4. I wandered the school corridors more and got more involved in classes that were happening - not as scary figure of authority, but to cultivate a more fun and trusting relationship with the overall student body (with the motive of demonstrating to them that there were other teachers they could come and talk to about any issues that were troubling them).
5. (Related to 4 above) I worked harder on my proficiency in the students' mother language, and talked a lot more to them before and between classes, just socially.
6. I implemented anonymous feedback procedures emphasizing that students could raise any issue whatsoever with school management, and only be contacted about it if they felt comfortable talking to someone about it.
It wasn't a perfect or a super secure system, but I did my best without any real guidelines to follow.
NIGHTMARE 3:
It gets ugly again here, so if you're the sensitive sort, grab some sort of container or at least a couple of tissues. Again, a couple of years after nightmare 2 above, and again at a different school.
This was the particularly shocking experience of finding out that one of your teachers was a distributor of online child pornography. The last person anyone would've guessed could be capable of such monstrosity.
The way we found out about it was when the teacher simply didn't turn up to work one day. The school owner bustled in with a look of profound disgust on her face, and ordered us very curtly to clear the teacher's desk, arrange for his teaching schedule to be shared out amongst the other teachers permanently, and to not ask any questions.
Well, I did ask questions, and refused to leave the owner's office until I got answers. This teacher was a well-liked member of staff, very committed to his job, and a foreign teacher for whom I was responsible. He was also in a foreign country, and if he was in some sort of trouble, it was possible he needed help.
He was in trouble - of the very worst kind, and he did need help... for his soul.
This teacher was sprung by a team of local government detectives (in cooperation with authorities from the United States) obtaining and selling child pornography online. They raided his apartment and found "thousands"of images and videos on his computer that were apparently at the "worst possible" end of the spectrum when it comes to these matters. By the time any of us heard about it, he was locked up in the capital city at the other end of the country, getting legal aid and waiting for his court appearance. (Just to clarify, in the end he was found guilty of possession, but apparently not "distribution" - and deported back to the United States, where I assume he is now on one of those watch registers).
Swallowing a tide of shocked revulsion, I made some enquiries then, just to make sure this was what it appeared to be. Some helpful and very professional officials from the US Departments of State and Homeland Security confirmed it all for me - stating they'd been tracking this person for some time.
This guy had been teaching children. As young as 6 years old. In OUR school.
This also happened only a couple of months after the massive incident involving the arrest of a pedophile in Thailand became front page news all over the Asian region, and headlined special news documentaries (especially where we were, when it came to light that the teacher arrested had spent an entire year teaching in our country before going on to Thailand).
Now, as disgusting and horrible as that all was, there was *some* relief on my part. We had very solid policies in place at our school (based in no small part on the previous experience I mentioned above) - the guy was never alone with any of our kids at our school. And, as far as I could reasonably tell, not outside the school either.
But then it got truly nauseating...
I told the school owner that to be absolutely sure that the students this man had been associated with were safe, we needed to explain this issue to the other teachers, inform the parents of the students concerned, and (somehow) talk to the students themselves. What if this man had organised "out of school" meetings with some of our students (as the previous guy had been trying to do)? How could we possibly know if we didn't ask other teachers, parents and students?
Going 'public' would be messy, but it was the only responsible thing to do. Given the hysteria in that context at the time regarding pedophile male foreign teachers, it was also a clear way to show everyone in our area that we were responsible, and that their children would be safe at our school (as crazy at that might at first sound). It would also highlight the issue for private institutes in general - that there needed to be meetings and policies set here to deal with such an insidious threat.
The owner, who had been carrying a look of disgust up to that point, looked at me as if I was completely and utterly insane.
Under no circumstances whatsoever were other teachers to be told the truth. And mentioning anything at all to students or parents (or anyone else from the public) would...
... cause the enrollment to decrease.
I went away, figuring emotions and mental faculties were over-frayed after such a recent shock, and came back to see the owner the next day.
She was even more emphatic. She was petrified. She was going to lose students. If I tried to tell anyone...
A really bizarre debate/argument ensued, with me talking in increasingly quiet shock and her getting more and more hysterical. When I realised that the idea of losing students was more abhorrent to her than having had a distributor of online child porn on her staff, teaching little children SHE was responsible for, that was when I did have to go and vomit.
We had an enrollment of close to a thousand students. We were the most popular school in the city. The coziest financially, too. We had great teachers, and a great reputation. The owner had been mega-rich before she started the school, and as a result of the school's success was almost swimming in money. But in this particular country, there are two equally important currencies: money, and social reputation.
She didn't want to lose even one student as a result of this - what she called "an embarrassing fiasco". The teacher is gone. Nobody knows. Keep it that way, and let's just forget this ever happened.
Tell me, how in hell could anyone be expected to just "forget it ever happened", not inform parents, and still call themselves an educator of children and a responsible citizen?
How?
Well, I approached it this way: the teachers were my responsibility, and the students/parents were hers. I went and told the teachers.
That was horrible. Really horrible. Most of them cried. A couple of them had to leave the room, because they needed to throw up. Some of the teachers had become reasonably close to the man in question. It was surreal for them, as unbelievable as it was nauseating.
As for me... Well, the owner ripped shreds off me for going against her explicit instructions not to inform the staff. I didn't get fired, but the relationship was shot and just rotted away for the rest of my contracted term. Luckily, by that stage I had a spousal permanent residence visa which meant I could get fired and not have to leave the country.
Despite having worked for her for three years, and having taken her school from 'new kid on the block' to top academy in the city (from 300 students to close to 1000), getting four of her teachers to commence MA TESOL studies, and another three of them writing contracts with a major international publisher, she didn't even attend my farewell dinner. And I was glad she didn't.
I left the private academy sector in that country after that, and never returned. Well, I did, as a visiting coursebook writer doing presentations and workshops. But not as an employee.
So, loyal blog reader (if you've managed to read this far): why did I write about these experiences?
Well, for one, it is something of a relief to get these nightmares off my chest. It doesn't change the evil of it all, but it is helpful to spill one's guts and tell everything exactly as it was, in relation to such important issues in our YL/TEFL profession.
For me personally, there is the insidious evil of the deeds/situations themselves (for nightmares 1 and 3, and potentially for nightmare 2). That is foul enough. But what sickened me to depths I never knew could exist in a person was the realisation that people would be ready to put their profits and reputation before a 100% commitment to ensuring the safety of children they agree to care for (and whose parents they take colossal amounts of money from). There is also the poignant despair of feeling completely helpless and ineffective in those situations.
I also wrote about them because... nobody else is. Or very few, anyway.
Taboos and shame aside, the nightmares potentially stalking young learner education need (in my opinion) to be addressed in three fundamental ways:
1. Teachers and managers need more information about really protecting the young learners they take responsibility for.
2. Teachers need to know what threatening signs to look for, and ideas on how to handle situations if they emerge (both generally and in relation to different cultural contexts).
3. There needs to be a lot more discussion in YL TEFL circles about these issues, with resources and emotional support.
I don't see stuff like this dealt with in (or even around) YL teaching certifications. I don't see any sort of guidelines provided to (or from) schools.
It's just monumental stuff that appears (after the fact) in news articles. It's horrible, but it won't be something I'll likely have to deal with...
Or will I?
Something needs to change.
Thanks for reading. :-(
