One
of your 4th grade female students is very well developed physically and
looks as if she is 15 instead of 9 years of age. Today you heard a
group of 5th grade boys commenting on her body in a lewd and humiliating
manner. Two other teachers also heard these comments but blew them off
as "boys will be boys," and "she needs to get used to it."
Considering teacher ethics and responsibilities, describe how you might respond to and handle this situation.
As a teacher, I have a responsibility to protect my students and also to lead my students into appropriate behavior. I would first address those teaches and explain to them that the reason that boys are going to boys is because no one has ever taught them how to respect a lady. By accepting disrespect from our students towards other students, we don't even deserve them to respect us. Explain to the teachers that if the fourth grade girl were to overhear this or find out someone was talking about them, she could really be affected by their words negatively. She could develop body image issues and this could completely affecting her developing social skills and she won't be able to relate to other people based on this. I as a female do not know how appropriate it is for me as a teacher to talk to the boys about this. I don't understand the way boys minds work. If I had a male colleague, I would approach him and have him discuss with the boys why this is inappropriate and disrespectful. He will be better able to address the boys because he as a boy understands.
Ooh, I like your idea of getting a male colleague to talk to the boys about the issue of disrespecting girls. That is an excellent point that he would have a better way of reaching out to address how boys think. I often times reach out to my grown nephew to talk to my son about girl issues because apparently it's too embarassing to have your mom talk to you about it, or so my son says. Good response.
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