We Know Better. Now It’s Time to Do Better.

I like to imagine a world where in the fall my sophomore year of high school, all students were called down to the auditorium to listen to someone speak on student-teacher relationships—specifically, how teachers and students can work together to ensure they maintain healthy and safe boundaries. Also, what steps to take if a teacher or student are acting in ways that are not healthy or safe. In that world, my english teacher would have probably been less funny, but undoubtedly much more appropriate. He wouldn’t have opened a door to a world where teachers could be crass and sarcastic and harshly self-deprecating. In that world, I would have immediately understood that my theater director commenting on my chest size was repulsive. I would have known that it was wrong for him to take two teenagers to the movies at night after rehearsal (I can still see the three of them sardined into his white single cab pickup). In that world, I would have recognized that my band director was grooming me instead of believing our relationship developed organically. In that world, I’m not a victim of child sexual assault and abuse.

That isn’t the world I lived in—but it can be the world others live in.

Why have educational institutions not adopted best practice methods for keeping students and teachers safe? Why is it not standard for educators in training to take at least one ethics class? Every year there are hundreds of cases of educator sexual misconduct in the news. Have we just become indifferent? What are we afraid of? Maybe there’s a concern that by talking about sexual misconduct, it’s going to put more restrictions on school employees, and make the job less appealing? Maybe, if we draw attention to the signs of misconduct, schools will have to be retroactively responsible for the educators who are clearly not following those standards? Whatever the reason, it isn’t about the safety of students.

I ask you, in what other situation is it worse to communicate expectations and implement safety guards? It appears we have prioritized protecting assets over protecting the very humans whose lives we’ve been entrusted with.

We know better, now let’s make the choice to do better.