نکات برگزیده

Professional distance may be the yardage from tee to green if you're Tiger Woods. But, if you are a teacher or a school employee who has regular contact with students, professional distance is a concept worthy of notice.

Professional distance is, quite simply, keeping your relationship with students at arm's length to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Keep it or you may find yourself facing termination of your employment, losing your license; and perhaps, defending yourself in criminal court.

This may be easier said than done, particularly for younger educators who are not that much older than some of their students. Seemingly innocent behavior can, unfortunately, quickly become a serious career hazard.

Maintaining one's professional distance still allows certain types of reasonable physical contact between teachers and students. Especially at the elementary level -- an innocent hug, a pat on the back, or a helping hand may be just what is needed for a student to feel special and ready to learn. It is not now, and never has been, wrong for a teacher to have physical contact with a student. Caution and common sense are the words of the day.

The ISEA has had to represent teachers (not necessarily limited to recent graduates) who felt the need to be "friends" with their students, or act in the place of a student's family. While it may not be unprofessional to be "friendly," educators should remember at all times that the only relationship with students that will always stand the test of professional scrutiny is the true student/teacher relationship.

The goal cannot be to foster a relationship of "student/best friend," or "student/substitute parent" (no matter how much the student needs one), or "student/counselor" (unless you are the school counselor).Spending large amounts of time with a student outside of class, or giving gifts to particular students -- expensive or otherwise -- may result in some very unpleasant consequences no matter how well intentioned your actions are.

Students enjoy having their teachers pay extra attention to them. Many will attempt to take advantage of the situation. In the student's eyes, and in the eyes of others, they become much more than "teacher's pet."

As an example, you may be a hero today, but when you are forced to fail that same student on a test tomorrow, your "popularity stock" is almost guaranteed to plummet. Too many students, and some parents as well, will look to blame someone for the change. This may be followed by the accusation, for whatever reason (and they are as varied as your imagination), that you have somehow engaged in some type of improper conduct with the student.

When something like that happens, many educators are made to feel guilty until they prove themselves innocent. It becomes virtually impossible to defend oneself against something that never happened when faced with a student who insists otherwise. Truly, in this situation, "nice guys finish last."

There was a situation in Iowa a short time ago where a high school girl accused a teacher of inappropriate sexual conduct. The story had a few holes in it, but criminal charges were still filed. Fortunately, a sharp deputy sheriff doing the investigation cleared the teacher. The truly frightening part of the story is that the girl was willing to deliberately ruin the career of the teacher for no other reason than to make her inattentive boyfriend jealous.

It should not go unmentioned that even after he was cleared, the administration still wanted (but didn't get) the teacher's resignation because "it just didn't look good." Unfortunately, this is just one example of many that have occurred over the last several years.

The moral of the story is: Before you act, think about possible appearances and consequences of getting too close to a student. Maintain the professional distance that is required of an educator. Your students, no matter what their age, will never respect you as a professional unless you demand their respect and act as if you deserve it. You may not be a friend or surrogate family member, but you will still have your job and your career.

And as always, contact your UniServ director at the very first hint of trouble.