Should you visit a student's home?

How about "no?" [short answer--long answer below...]
***

I received an e-mail recently--within the last week-from some teacher magazine to which I had inadvertently revealed my e-mail address...

The subject heading was "Should you visit a student's home?"

I haven't read the e-mail itself yet, because my head is not done exploding.

I don't have enough labels for this....and "google blogger" won't let me attach all of my labels.


in BRIEF:

• How many hours of training in recognizing the signs of child abuse have you had?
• Have you prepared yourself for the spiritual/emotional toll this may take?
• How many hours of training have you had in your legal obligation--if any--to report any of the  things I will list below:
• Do you know what to do (what you will do, what you could do or should do) if you see:
• drugs?
• drug use?
• not enough food in the house [hey, you are not looking for that, but if someone opens the fridge and there's nothing inside--is this child neglect--do you HAVE to report it?]
• weapons, legal or otherwise
• filth
• signs of sex abuse--happens in wealthy, middle class, poor households
• moral decay - opens a can of worms--what if you disapprove deeply of their lifestyle, even if it is not technically illegal?  I'm thought I was a hip, progressive person until I heard some of the crap that goes on...Will you report this, and if you do, will you be open to legal claims of slander?  Even talking about it in the teachers' lounge may be actionable!
• domestic partner adult-on-adult violence
• children who are clearly not attending school
• child labor
• overcrowded conditions
• possible child prostitution
• animal abuse
• mom's multiple "boyfriends"/johns living on the couch
• illegal immigrants [whatever your politics--are you legally obliged to report this?  And if you refuse to or don't?]
• squalor?
• lack of smoke detectors?

Do you know what to do if you see anything like this?

Do you?
Do you?

Oh...

In short--are you a social worker?  Because that's a real job that requires real training, real skills, real experience.  How many psychology classes have you had?  Can you recognize the signs of depression?  Suicide ideation?  What constitutes an imminent threat to a child's safety?  Mold?  A gaping hole in the floor? An exposed electrical outlet?  A non-working toilet?  A parent who screams constantly? An older brother who seems overly physical?

You are way out of your depth.

Maybe it's a disservice to ACT like social workers, when we are NOT.  We wouldn't go around the community pretending to be nurses....adopting the miens and atittudes of health care workers.

AND...if the point is to establish trust...and you end up reporting/noting/talking about things you have witnessed...well, how'd that work out?

Maybe everyone should just do their jobs, and do them well, and support more funding for SOCIAL WORKERS....

Another somewhat less obvious danger is that if people become dependent--even subconsciously--on the notion that teachers are caregivers, what happens when their children go off to college?  Is there not a tacit understanding that someone is, in some vague sense, "looking out for" your children?

Think again.  The professors do NOT do this, are not obligated to do this; most are actively unwilling and uninterested in doing this, and almost all are unqualified to do this; certainly ALL do not have the TIME to do this.

We--my roommates and I--had a resident advisor in college.  She was a medical school student who we never saw.  We literally set fire to our dorm, did drugs, left our doors unlocked (and had things stolen, which means a stranger was in our dorm rooms--AT NIGHT), experienced sexual assault, had psychological meltdowns, and even the most stable among us could have used some advice on basics like course selection.  The university--which had/has an endowment that makes it one of the largest financial entities in the world--was paying this woman to give off the air of watchfulness....

Let's not fall into that.  We Are Teachers.  We should be proud of that and not fall into the trap of thinking we are obliged to do more than we are trained to do.