Crossing Boundaries

Crossing Boundaries: A Variety of Perspectives on Preschool Stories (Iorio & Visweswaraiah)

Aloha Everyone!

While reading Crossing Boundaries: A Variety of Perspectives on Preschool Stories (Iorio & Visweswaraiah): It reminded me of a bad experience I went through in my past but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Before I started working for HIDOE, I work at a non-profit organization for 3 years as a skills trainer (my part-time job) while attending school. I loved working as a ST (skills trainer), until I was confronted with a dilemma, reporting on a staff member who was abusing couple of our students who was mentally challenges. This staff would mentally abuse them and sometime use physical focus. With the physical force right away there was couple of staff members including me reported this immediately to our supervisor. Well as time went by it seems that nothing was done. Later on that month I was inform that our supervisor just gave this staff a verbal warning. “WOW!”

The protocol with this company was to report any incident to our immediately supervisor (through the chain of commands) and I felt that didn’t work. But here’s the real problem, this certain staff who was abusing our students has been with this company for over 8 years and had friends in management position. Morally, this didn’t sit right with me. It’s sad to say this, but I had to think about it for a while before deciding to report it to upper management. I was thinking about my job, should I turn the other way and just collect my paycheck and say nothing or should I report it and make my work environment a harmful place for me (mentally and spiritually) to work at. Now, let’s not forget about the two students who is being abuse by this staff.

Now here is where I cross the boundaries, to make a long story short, I reported this incident to the vice president of the company through e-mail messages and a written report on the incident. They did an internal investigation and within a month or so I left this company (some people at work wasn’t being nice to me) and 4 months later this staff member got fired because of code of ethics, behavior management, and abuse & neglect of a clients/student by parent, legal guardian, caregivers & staff.

This was my turning point of my professional career before I became a teacher. I called this “The crossroad to my character” What I have learned through this event is that, I can not hesitate when it comes down to the well being of a child (student) who is helpless. I became a stronger advocate for my students because of this incident and I learned two things to do as a teacher. Take a lot of notes and documentations to back you up when you are planning to report anyone who is doing wrong. That’s the best advice I could give to you all ;-D!