Elementary Lesson

I recently wrote about this in a fiction piece, so I was surprised to find it so clearly portrayed in a real situation.  We teach our kids about stranger danger (I hope!) so that they temper their childlike innocent and tendency to trust with a little skepticism and understanding that some people are not nice.  What we often fail to teach kids is that danger can come from the Trusted Adults that we tell them are okay.  In this case, it was a teacher.

SILVER SPRING, Md. (WUSA) -- A stunning abuse trial is underway in Montgomery County, Maryland, involving a teacher allegedly punching, kicking and choking her first grade students.

Susan Lee Burke faces two counts of second degree child abuse and 10 counts of second degree assault. She was a first grade teacher at Greencastle Elementary School in Silver Spring until her arrest.

Here's how it happened: the parents of a 7-year-old boy allegedly witnessed their happy child become so anxious, he bit his nails until they bled and started wetting his bed. They repeatedly asked if he was bullied. All he did share, according to prosecutors, was that he wanted to switch to a different class. He finally confided in a school counselor and an administrator that he'd been physically assaulted by Burke.

The defense is saying the stories from students are inconsistent, which makes sense because they are little kids.  Seven-year-olds are not known for being consistent, and process events through a filter that only a child expert can examine.  Kids who made it up would probably not think it through enough to say "I need to bite my nails so I can make this look good," so I tend to give them some credibility.  There is also the fact that those who abuse children tend to work in child-related fields such as teaching.  However, the article does not include and defense material for the teacher, including an explanation that would bring this into a coherent and regrettable misunderstanding.

In honor of this, I'll be talking to the young'uns and reminding them that danger lurks everywhere, even from sources you believe you can trust.  It's so easy to think of a strange fellow in a raincoat that we forget the danger right in front of us.