Teacher – Students – Issues – Manhandling

Teacher – Students – Issues – Manhandling

As a school administrator, we all declare to parents at the time of admission we do not encourage manhandling of any sort inside the school premises. As a philosophy, we completely desist and detest corporal punishment. You go ahead and tell the teachers the same. But the problem is not this, the problem is when some incident happens, and brings the entire system into jeopardy. Given the sensibilities involved now a days, all of this can become a very difficult premise for a school to be in.These are some of the ways in which a school teacher/ Parent / Principal or administrator can go about handling;
1) Speak to the child in isolation without the teacher involved – Get to the bottom of the situation. Try to understand what led to all of this. Is is a regular fixture or a ‘one off’ stray incident.
2) Listen to parents – When the issue is brought to your notice, let parents vent their entire feelings and their take on the situation.
3) Discuss with teachers – Ask her/him  to update you on the sequence of events.
4) Discuss with other teachers or colleagues of the teacher in quandary – See if you can find a behaviour pattern here.
5) Speak to classmates of the ‘suffering’ student – See if the matter reported is genuine or a fabrication of kid’s imagination.
Having gone through all of the above, there could be two scenarios;

Scenario 1: Teacher is responsible
1) Waste no time in tendering apology from the school side and personally from the teacher to the parent as well as to the student.
2) Make parents believe through a common meeting that something of this sort will never repeat again.
3) Caution all the staff  members about the repercussions one has to face in case of found guilty.
4) Take action against the teacher.

Scenario 2: Teacher is innocent
This is a very likely scenario, where the student fabricates certain stories to take advantage of parent’s soft corner. They also act like this sometimes to shy away from the work in the class, or home work given or for some other cause.
1) Be diplomatic in handling of this scenario, as point blank handling of this situation can result into disaster. Make parents aware of the working of the school.
2) Make parents if possible attend a full day at the school for them to understand the working of the school
3)Make them meet classmates of their ward, meet other teachers and see the school psychologist.
4) Try appeasing them by first making them vent their feelings – This is very important. Ask parents; have they witnessed this scenario before and how to possibly deal with this situation. At the same time we should keep in mind we are talking about a child here, he or she should not feel cornered or guilty.
5) Make communication transparent by making the student and parent believe in your process.

A school can progress with only good word of mouth and a positive recommendation from parents involved. Hope all the above will help those in need of it.