PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Providence Teachers Union is asking the city’s school department to change the way it handles allegations of abuse against students in order to prevent its members from being placed on administrative leave without reasonable cause.
In a letter to Superintendent Chris Maher, the union claimed students have been “emboldened to make allegations at a whim knowing that the teacher will be removed from the building with no questions asked,” with some “taunting teachers with threats” of contacting the R.I. Department of Children, Youth and Families with abuse claims.
I personally do not have any experience with the topic. However, there was this time when my then Transitional Kindergarten daughter pee herself and the teacher did not even noticed. It must have been a long time that she had been wearing the wet clothes and nobody noticed. The incident happen again in the same week, but this time the teacher did noticed the incident. As natural, my husband and I became concerned that something wrong was going on, especially because it was almost the end of the school year and she had never wet her pants. Many ideas came to our mind. Most of them were negatives about the teacher. And to make it worst this same teacher had taught my eldest daughter Kindergarten. I decided to confront the teacher so that he could give me and explanation. He was sorry for missing the first time that the accident happened. The way he explained me how he handles bathroom incidents seemed fair to me. But when he asked my daughter if he had been mean to her when the incident happen, it seemed as though someone had emboldened her to accuse the teacher of mistreatment. He shook his head revealing an uncomfortable attitude toward the problem. Although we did not make any suspected accusation, we did become very vigilant. For us as parents it was so easy to assume. The next year I volunteered for his classroom. I became aware of the responsibility and frustration this amazing teacher deals with, especially when children with special needs do not receive the help they deserve. I realized that the time my daughter pee on her pants must have been one of this days when the teacher is supposed to pull himself thin to try to juggle a child who tries to grab anything and everything, a little girl who refuses to stop spinning and jumping around the classrom, and 23 other students who are waiting to finish the morning math lesson.