Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         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!) well there definitely is a tough situation. I don't think it's abnormal to jump to the conclusion you did considering the fact that Steve could rarely afford adequate clothes much less new clothes. It does call upon all of us to be careful though and remember that teenagers (and their families) want certain cool things even if they sometimes can't afford the normal things. They will often extend themselves and even overextend themselves financially to get just one or two things that make them feel good. It also calls upon us to realize that thievery and other out of bounds behavior is not limited to struggling socioeconomic outsiders. They say that shoplifters are mainly middle-class and upper-middle-class teenagers and young adults who could well afford to buy most of what they steal. And most of the time they don't steal things that are really needs anyway. I guess we all tend to have our stereotypes and though I pride myself on thinking outside the box in those terms I realize that I too would've had the same thoughts about Steve.I hope though that I would've thought twice before confronting him considering the fact that both growing up and as an adult I've had friends – and my children have too –who are poor but upstanding citizens. it's important to move quickly to try and get to the bottom of a situation like that, but I guess it's also important to maybe confer with other teachers and staff who know the students and can also observe their behavior to get a consensus of opinion when it comes to investigation and confrontation.