Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Smelly Kid I guess I am still considered a novice teacher because I have been teaching for four years only. I am an elementary school teacher who teaches in a mostly White suburban setting. Couple of weeks ago a new student joined my classroom. He and his parents recently moved from Eastern Europe. His father works at the local university as a music professor. I am not sure what his mother does. He is a wonderful child. Although he speaks little English, he tries to participate in class activities and to make friends with others in the classroom. Couple days after he arrived, I noticed a strange smell around him. I was sure that it was body odor. The other students in the classroom started noticing it too. They started making fun of him. I learned in my multicultural classes when I was at the university that not all cultures promote taking showers everyday, and that body odor is not considered a problem everywhere in the world. Now I have a big dilemma. If I tell my student about it, I might embarrass him. If I sent a note to his parents, I may appear disrespectful toward their culture. But the way he is treated in the classroom by the other students is becoming a real problem. What should I do? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) I would definitely ask his parents to come in for a face to face meeting. The child's feelings should be the greatest consideration and a note home might not be interpreted correctly. At the meeting I would lead off by emphasizing that the student was bright and eager to learn and participate. I would also let the parents know that he was integrating well into our classroom, but that I had a concern. I would want to make sure that they knew I valued and understood their culture and that I respected them as a family, but that he had been teased at school because of his smell. I would try to explain that most students in our school bathed daily and so to them, this smell was unpleasant and not something they were used to. I don't think I would tell the parents what to do, but let them have all of the information and then make a decision that they feel is best for them. Hopefully they would want him to be accepted in class and not be teased, but if they chose not to make him conform to the norms in the new culture, then maybe I would pull those students aside, who are teasing and explain to them what is going on. I wouldn't want to call attention to it in front of the class. Hopefully this would resolve the situation.