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Case: Poor and Innocent I made one of the biggest mistakes in my professional life as a teacher about a week ago. I teach middle school English. We collected money for a breast cancer awareness event, and I put the cash and the checks in separate envelopes. After lunch time, I could not locate the envelope with the cash. I looked everywhere, but I could not find it. I asked my students if anyone took the envelope by mistake but nobody came forward. So, the cash was lost. Apparently, someone stole it, I thought. I have a good mix of students in my classroom; different religions, races, cultures, and rich and poor. Steve is the poorest student. Sometimes students make fun of Steve for wearing the same pair of shoes or the same pants all the time. The day after the money had been lost Steve came to school wearing a new jacket. Automatically, everyone, including me, started thinking he stole the cash. I took Steve to the principal's office to have a conference with him about the lost cash and his new jacket. We told him why we were having the meeting and asked him to be truthful. He said he had nothing to do with the lost cash. When we asked him about the new jacket, he said he had worked in his uncle's mechanic shop past weekend and made some money. Then, his father gave him some money to make up the difference for him to buy the jacket. We called his father and he confirmed everything Steve had told us. At that moment I thought I had never been so embarrassed in my life. But the more embarrassing moment came when Steve asked me if I had questioned Greg, a student from a middle class background, because he happened to come to school wearing a new jacket that day also. How can I fix the broken trust between me and Steve? How would you react to this situation—lost money and a poor student wearing a new jacket the next day? What would be the most appropriate way to respond to this situation? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) Securing monies and funds that were given to you by students for a school run fundraiser falls under the ethical standards in most states. Why those funds were not immediately given to the administration is the first question that needs to be answered by the teacher. The second issue is a classroom management issue. As a teacher in that situation, I NEVER collected money in class during instructional time, it was always collected at a time where I could then immediately go and deposit it. This is simply a mismanagement of time. The third and final issue is why was the money not securely locked up in the room so that no one had access to it. I am sure somewhere in every classroom in the country is a place that a teacher can lock something up, this is just common sense. As to the trust issue, it also borders on the ethical issues to accuse someone of a crime without any proof, which is what this teacher did. Making the correlation that Steve, the poorest student, stole the money because he came to school with a jacket that you never saw before is both unethical and wrong. Let me make that statement again, you assumed that it was a new jacket because you never saw it before, it may have been in the family for years, it may not have even been recently purchased. How I would have handled the situation is this: Let it go. You, as the teacher, were responsible for the money. You cannot trace the bills back to any one individual in the class, without substantial proof, which you will never get. The right thing to do is to make up the difference out of your own pocket, since you were the one who put the money in the position to be stolen. You cannot blame any student in that class, period. Learn from your mistake and move on from it. As far as fixing the broken trust with Steve, I would discreetly pull him aside and have a one on one conversation, be honest and explain what happened. Tell the student that you are sorry to implicate them in something they weren't involved with, and hope that over time you can rebuild the trust. |
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