I had a conversation with one of my students last week that has stuck with me and I wanted to see what everyone else thought.
I was teaching a private LAMDA speech and drama lesson. The student is a young girl who is 8 years old. She told me she had an important question to ask me. She then went on to say - You are driving a train and you come to a split in the tracks. Go left and you will run over an old man, go right and you will run over three young men. What would you do?
You can imagine this was not exactly what I was expecting. She went on to tell me her clearly well thought out argument as to why, regrettably, she would chose to run over the old man.
I was reluctant to answer in this situation as I didn't feel that I am in a position to be influencing her over questions such as these. I also did not want anything I said to be taken out of context. Imagine her later telling her parents that I would like to run over an old man. So I asked her where she had heard the question. She had heard it from her uncle. I then said it was a very difficult one and that I would need sometime to think about the answer. She seemed happy with this and we haven't spoken about it since.
What do you think you would do in a similar situation? Or have you a similar experience?
It made me think of one of my questions that I will be including in my 4A task - How personal do you think your relationships can be with your students? And how much of yourself can you reveal to them?
Drama can be very personal as we often draw on personal experiences to understand how a character might be feeling but we have to be careful when working with young people. I would love to hear your thoughts?
Lisa x
Hi Lisa, I was thinking about ethical relationships with students the other day. Especially in the arts and particularly drama. Reason I was thinking of it was over the summer I ran drama camps, so I was with the children 9am-3pm 5 days per week, and I did 5 camps! So you can imagine some of them I got to know pretty well. I always find there's a fine line between being friendly and being their friend.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I had an issue in one camp. We were doing improvisation and I was with a group of teenagers I know well. One girl paired up with her friend, started the improv and mid way they started an argument. Out of nowhere, one of the girls slapped the other - not hard and it wasn't meant to actually hit her and they were both giggling about afterwards. Anyway because I know the girls and because I was I think too relaxed with them I brushed it off with a "please be more careful, you can't hit each other" and just checked she was ok. The next day I had an email complaining from a parent saying I hadn't properly reprimanded the girl who had slapped her daughter. I live and learn! You have to always think about how a conversation / action could come across to an outsider. I think you had the right answer to the student's question!
I know what you mean. When I did the work on the youth programme over the summer I felt that I was a little more open with the young people because they were a bit older and the programme was residential role. I was also in a mentor position rather than a teacher so we were encouraged to stimulate those kind of thought provoking conversations with the young people.
DeleteBut it more of a class environment I find I'm wary to say a lot of things in case they may be misconstrued.
How did you deal with the parent? It's difficult when you know children are really just being children and messing around a bit.
Hi Lisa,
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post. Ethics are so important in education, especially in the arts as you say which can be more personal. Have you changed any of your thoughts about this now, looking back on your original post? Have you undertaken any research that has altered your view on this incident?
I had a tutorial with Paula last night and we discussed the importance of 'professionalism', knowing when to keep to ethics. We also discussed that sometimes in inquiry you are undertaking practitioner research that goes beyond your role. I am going to blog about this later today, so have a look and see if it helps you.
Many thanks,
Jess.
I haven't done any research into it other than chatting with friends and colleagues about it. Those people I spoke to who don't work with young people didn't immediately understand what my reservations about putting my opinions forward would be. I had to explain it to them how my words could have been taken out of context.
DeleteI don't think it changed my view in this particular instance. Just reiterated to me how careful we have to be when we are in a position to influence young people. We don't always know what their parents may or may not find appropriate. With my private students I generally know their parents and have a rough idea of the kind of people they are, but this is not always the case in a larger class.
Thanks Jess I will check out your blog.