Job Discussion Forums

[tw]

I will not say when and where this happened in order to protect the school's name (I am not writing this to ruin the school).

This is what happened. During a casual conversation with a student, the name of a fellow FT came up. The student then mentioned incidents and dialogues made by the FT that would constitute as being inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour by a teacher in the West. The most serious and shocking was that the alleged FT suggested to the student to provide sexual favours in exchange for private oral English tutorial. According to the student, the accused FT apparently admitted that there were other students in the school who were under this "arrangement" with the FT. Knowing the FT's characteristics at the time (married middle-aged man bragging to have around 20 girlfriends age 19-39) and the student's willingness to provide a hand-written statement that was translated by me to the other FT's, I decided to report this to the school. The FAO was shocked and the FT was eventually dismissed.

Now, imagine this happening in your school. What would YOU do? For me, I never regretted blowing the whistle on the FT.

[Roger]

How did you "blow" your whistle???
Just by believing one student you arrive at the conclusion that one of your peers is a leecher?
DOn't get me wrong - I happen to personally know some FTs with unsavoury intentions in CHina, politically and morally reprehensible motives. But they all know how to covfer up their tracks and no one is any wiser.
Students have access to a variety of adult persons who can counsel them and take measures. There is, for instance, the office for students where they can lodge complaints, and where they have in fact to report on their FTs (in particular whether these FTs are politically sensible enough!). If anything untoward would happen between a FT and a student I for one have no doubt students would report on that person!

THere is, admittedly, a huge grey area in which both students and teachers wade with personal ambitions and lowered moral standards; some students encourage teachers to up their marks in exchange for you know what. THis has never happened to me, though, but if I wanted to I could easily prey on some of my female charges. And that's what perhaps happened in your case, although it takes two to tango! Chinese teachers are by no means above such behaviour as you can infer from a large number of newspaper reports on goings-on in this country.
This is an extremely opaque situation, and as an FT I would never take sides in such cases!

[tw]

Alright, so maybe "flowing the whistle" was a wrong choice of words. Yes, only one student. It just so happened a student who I knew wouldn't lie about this, and it was agreed by all the other FT's that this had to be reported.

[wonderd]

For a Chinese student to admit this would indicate to me that this was not a lie. If you have enough evidence, then yes, you should do the right thing. If not, then I would go with the second option and have a conversation with him. Maybe don't tell him right off to watch his back, but talk to him about things and try to get an idea if this is something he would do.

Personally, I think you did the right thing.

[sigmoid]

[Midlothian Mapleheart]

Edited to remove offensive content.

Middy

[latefordinner]

I'm going out on a limb a bit here, but I don't think it's just a matter of what you do, but at what point you can comfortably decide what to do. As Roger notes, there are a lot of maybes; you don't want to turn your back on this, but you don't want to unfairly accuse someone and destroy his/her career either. FWIW, I think you've handled it pretty professionally; you've followed through with a bit of investigation to satisfy your own curiousity, you've quietly raised the issue and reached a consensus with other teachers, you haven't blown it up before the responsible admins could do their job. Well done, but that doesn't mean that it will be so easy for another teacher in another school to make the same call.
Now there is a second issue lurking here. How much can you trust the responsible admins to do their job on this? For most part I'd like to think that the cultural and language difficulties that divide the admins from the FTs is much smaller than the common sense of responsibility for the students. For most part. But now let's change things a bit. Suppose the FT notices what in the west would be clear signs of parental child abuse and reports it. What would come of it? YMMV, but my guess is the FT would be told to mind his business. Can you trust the admins to be honest in assessing complaints against FTs? I know of one school where a child left the classroom crying and telephoned the police because of something the FT had done. Sounds pretty horrific, no? The teacher was teaching the past/present distinction. "She has a pen" <takes pen from student> "She had a pen" <puts pen in his pocket> One boy didn't like the FT taking his pencil and called out, "Give me back my pencil, you dog!" The FT took mild exception to the language and asked the student to leave the room. The boy ran out crying and telephoned the police. Tell me, tw, do you want to see this teacher fired?

[tw]

Excellent question latefordinner. Believe me, I had the language issue well-thought of. Seeing that the student's English was not top-notched, I had to be absolutely and positively certain that the FT had indeed made such proposition to her. The student's answer was "my English may not be good but I know what he meant". It was not an easy decision. Roger pointed out that I shouldn't have just relied on one student's words. That I know too. There was no way I'd have known who else were being victimized (and I choose to use this word carefully) becasue as the student had pointed out to me, "the other girls would've felt ashamed to admit this".

As Midlothian Mapleheart had pointed out, it was certainly and by no means part of my job description to snitch on a collegue (FT or not). But maybe it's just the way I am, having a strong sense of duty towards my employer and my students. I care about my students both academically as well as non-academically. What can I say? Oh, I didn't sleep well over this at all. But like I said, I felt that knowing for sure what was happening, I had the obligation to put an end to it. Had the other FT's voted in majority against it, I wouldn't have done it. It was an unanimous decision (4 FT's) and we actually all had to "compare notes" on the accused FT's characteristic. Final word: it was not something we just decided to do without very careful consideration and investigation.

As for the case with the kid, I would have investigated thoroughly first. I do believe in the saying that every coin has two sides. But we couldn't talk to the accused FT because then it would have possibly exposed the accuser's identity. She was so afraid for her safety (the accused FT was starting to harass her) she needed someone walking with her after dark.