Should she report the behavior of the daycare teacher?
My fifteen year-old daughter is volunteering at the daycare center that cared for her the first five years of her life. She is required to volunteer forty hours a year for the community service requirement of her school. She really enjoys it, and says the kids like her better than anyone else in the room.
There is a “floating” teacher who we remember from when our son was in daycare. She was far from his favorite teacher. My daughter said that she saw the floater yelling at the kids. Two year-old kids.
No other teacher in the daycare center yells at the kids, as far as we know. There was a teacher who lost control of her kids because she expected too much of them, but the parents intervened, and she received some training and things got much better.
The question is: should my daughter report this? I will tell you her feelings on the subject later.
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16 Answers
I would! Yelling at kids accomplishes very little and IMO teaches them to solve their problems and express their feelings through yelling.
This is a really hard call for a 15 year old in this situation. The short answer is, of course, yes, but I can understand her reluctance considering that she needs to share an environment with this person for a while, and could easily come under fire. Can she report to the director in confidence so she won’t have to deal with a potential vengeful backlash?
If she tells her superviser exactly what happened and sticks to the facts, the superviser can make an informed decision about how best to handle it.
Her concern is that if she rats out a teacher, it will become very difficult for her to work there. The atmosphere will turn awfully chilly.
Yes. Teach her how to correctly point out things that appear wrong to here. Questioning authority in the right way is the key. When done correctly, it will teach her to be able to speak up and not fear retaliation especially in the workplace.
What kind of message would you be sending by supporting her to speak up as opposed to not speak up? There is nothing wrong with standing up for what you believe in. If there is retaliation, then it is not the place to even be volunteering in.
Can she start the conversation out with “I want to tell you something, but I’m afraid of retaliation if it gets out that I’m the one who told you”? Get some kind of whistle-blower protection?
It’s a sick system that automatically moves to protect transgressors. Unfortunately examples aren’t hard to find in many workplaces.
Yes is the right answer, but I can see how this would be hard for anyone. I think she has to ask what’s the worst that can happen. Can she endure a cold shoulder for all of 40 hours? Will she lose a short-term volunteer job?
If other staffers have observed the same behavior, perhaps they’ll back her up. Perhaps the offender will be coached—or discharged. Is she protecting the little kids or herself?
Is she able to get a different community service gig if this one blows up?
She’s protecting the kids—that’s why she would report it.
She could get another gig, but it might not be doing anything she likes doing.
OK, Fluther is definitely acting up. I’m reading every response in this question in bold face. And I’m sure that was not the original plan. But 900 points mysteriously disappeared off of my lurve score yesterday, and now this. Hmmm. Do we have a bug in the system?
@snowberry I don’t think we do, but you definitely might. Try Shift+Ctl+5.
What is it supposed to do? I sure didn’t imagine the disappearance of all that lurve…
@snowberry It just refreshes your browser. Always a good first step. Then pm Auggie and let her know that you lost lurve.
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