No required adult-child training – Omaha World
July 31, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Published Sunday July 31, 2011
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Before you can coach at Prep, camp with Boy Scouts, mentor to Methodist kids or step foot in a Millard classroom, you must first undergo training about appropriate adult-child relationships.
The training covers Nebraska law regarding child abuse and sexual exploitation, adults’ legal responsibility to report suspected abuse and the myriad trip wires — like Facebook and text messaging — that if crossed can end an adult’s professional career.
That the training exists is a reflection of the times: the acknowledgment that trusted adults have abused children in their care.
But the issue is not addressed uniformly. And three large area public school districts — with the most reach to children — do not require anything beyond the standard background checks and scattershot information that might come up in undergraduate education courses or in ethics discussions.
The State of Nebraska has a code of conduct that includes strict rules about teacher-student boundaries, but it doesn’t require such training for certified teachers. Neither does the State of Iowa, which covers the topic in its own code of ethics for teachers.
About one-fourth of formal complaints filed with the State of Iowa over teacher conduct have to do with inappropriate relationships. A similar figure was not available for Nebraska.
School districts and mentoring organizations do run background checks.
The Omaha Public Schools — which fired three teachers in two years over child sex abuse allegations — don’t give the subject more than a passing mention in annual teacher orientation.
OPS spokeswoman Luanne Nelson said employment privacy laws limit how the district can address specific cases with staff and the public. In general, she said, most know what is appropriate and what is not and act accordingly with students. “When an incident … occurs anywhere, it is hurtful to all caring educators,” Nelson said. “But we can’t brand all professional educators because of one incident — as most of them spend their entire careers as outstanding, caring adults with the best interests of their students at heart.”
Yet that’s the argument two Boys Town officials give in describing the training they require of employees. Because Boys Town works with a more vulnerable population — children in its schools generally have been abused — all employees must take courses on healthy relationships and recognizing and reporting signs of abuse. Teachers are told to keep all relationships with students transparent: no social media interaction, no exchanging of personal cellphone numbers, no being in a room alone with a student.
“We owe it to teachers to say ‘While your intentions may be good, this could get you into a lot of trouble,’” said Scott Hartman, associate vice president of training and evaluation. “If a child were to make an allegation and you have this child on your Facebook page as a friend, or the child has your cellphone number (it looks suspect).”
Millard’s new-hire training warns teachers against giving gifts to students, being “overly touchy” with students, engaging in peerlike behavior with students, sharing secrets and using email or text messaging for personal topics.
The latter has become a pressing issue for schools as they struggle to keep pace with the explosion of social networking. In recent years, a superintendent from Ravenna and a teacher from Shelton lost their jobs over inappropriate Facebook postings with former and current students.
The Papillion-La Vista school district, which like OPS doesn’t hold special training on adult-child relationships, nevertheless became one of the first metro-area districts to enact a strict policy prohibiting employees from engaging in friendships with a student on MySpace, Facebook or other social networking sites.
The Elkhorn school district, which also doesn’t have special training, spends the bulk of its annual three-hour fall orientation for new teachers warning them about maintaining a professional appearance in the classroom and on social networking sites.
Technology pushed Millard five years ago to develop a teacher training program specifically called “Establishing and Maintaining Appropriate Boundaries.” Though the training deals with the issue more broadly than social networking, Millard official Jim Sutfin said the culture of Facebook and cellphone use “changes everything” and drove the district to respond.
“We’re being very intentional,” said Sutfin, assistant superintendent of human resources. “It’s that human-to-human interaction where I have my own personal space and you can invade it inappropriately and it’s not OK.”
High-profile sex abuse scandals in the U.S. Catholic Church and Boy Scouts drove both organizations to create — or, in the case of the Boy Scouts, augment — adult training programs. The Omaha Archdiocese goes a step further and trains children at all grade levels about recognizing when boundaries are crossed.
Any adult working in a Catholic school — from priests to lunch ladies, parent volunteers and coaches — must complete the two-hour Safe Environment training, which is specific to Nebraska law and church teaching and highlights the sex abuse scandal that rocked the church.
Among the 38 adults at a recent Safe Environment training session were a retired priest from Lincoln, a young seminarian, college education majors, parent volunteers and teachers.
Attendee Ellen Godbey, a 61-year-old retired high school math teacher from California, said she’s old enough to be grandmother to the students at Jesuit Middle School, where she plans to volunteer in the fall.
“A lot of this is familiar,” she said of the 82-slide PowerPoint presentation. “But it’s good to be reminded. We can’t be complacent.”
Andrew Fisher, a 21-year-old University of Nebraska at Omaha student who will help coach Prep football in the fall, said the Catholic training reinforced what he heard in the classroom at UNO.
“They talk about boundaries,” he said of his college instructors.
Nancy Edick, dean of UNO’s College of Education, said it’s important not to scare away prospective teachers from being compassionate and helpful.
“It’s a fine line,” she said, adding that UNO instructors carefully monitor the “dispositions” of teacher candidates to “watch very closely for any potential red flags.”
Mary Beth Hanus, the victim assistance coordinator for the Omaha Archdiocese, said training should be explicit and mandatory. She said the archdiocese requires recertification every five years and that, to date, some 20,000 adults been trained here.
“You really put kids at risk if it’s not a concerted effort,” she said.
The Nebraska United Methodist Conference requires all adults working with children to take its Safe Sanctuaries training, which defines types of abuse, lists warning signs and reviews reporting policies and procedures.
Jesse Foster, who runs the program for the conference, said the church began it 11 years ago to be proactive “as opposed to waiting for something to happen and respond to it.”
The training, offered online or face to face, takes about four hours to complete and must be repeated every three years.
Foster said the training is designed to protect children from abuse and adults from false allegations.
Hanus of the Omaha Archdiocese said: “Knowledge is key for the adults and the kids, and really having that dialogue is huge. Somebody who is going to hurt kids is going to assume or hope that dialogue didn’t occur.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com
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