Life may not be easy for pupils who come from challenging background when both parents are usually not around with various reasons.
In my past articles, I mentioned that I am teaching low progress learners and they are mostly from broken families or parents are in prison due to various reasons.
There are lots of bitterness within these children.
It can be challenging regardless of how many years we have been teaching since they often do not even want to listen to us because they find life is meaningless except to get attention through the wrong ways.
This article is not meant to share strategies to deal with such children but a short sharing about my recent experience and my thoughts about the incident.
The crime
My 12-year-old pupil has recently committed a serious crime.
He had taken another pupil’s SIM card and used it to top up other mobile phones.
Parent of the victim had a shock after they received a mobile bill of over $300.
They reported it to the police.
The police was able to track the different numbers that benefitted from the top up.
My pupil was tracked down eventually.
Ignorance is not an excuse
My pupil had a history of stealing since he was 7 years old.
In the recent case, he claimed that he found the SIM card and used it.
When we found something, we would pass it to the police but he used the SIM card to top up other mobile phones.
A mobile bill of over $300 is not a small amount of money.
When he was on the phone with his grandmother, he blamed his grandmother for not stopping him since she knew about it.
Instead of acknowledging his mistake, he tried to push the blame to others.
I was actually writing this article in school. I had to go to the general office with the head of discipline due to another disciplinary case related to him.
He had numerous disciplinary cases for the past two weeks.
This police case is not within the control of the school.
His grandmother had not told his mother about it due to fear of her possible abusive physical punishment to my pupil.
The fact that he gets into fights in school so often could be due to how he is being treated at home by his own mother.
Nevertheless, a crime is a crime. He needs to acknowledge his mistake and accept the consequences that would come his way.
Heart of a teacher
Every teacher wants the best for students. We desire to seek out the best within our students regardless of what we see and hear.
We choose to believe that every child can be a useful person to the society and we want to be the change agent for each child.
I would still continue to encourage the boy to do what is right and have a stronger will to change his own destiny.
We do not just teach the mind but we want to impact the heart.
There is definitely a limit to how much I can do since I am not with the child 24 hours a day and family environment does play an important part for the mental and emotional growth of the child.
We do what we can and we choose not to give up on any child as far as we can.
In conclusion
In this modern society, it is hard to imagine that there are still so many broken families as well as the use of violence on children.
It is very easy to have children but the hard part is to nurture them to become useful contributors to society rather than burden.
Teachers cannot simply educate the minds but we need to nurture the hearts of these children positively despite of the difficult situation that they may face at home.
When they can rise above their home difficulties, they would have the resilience to face future difficulties in their adulthood.
Disclaimer: This is my personal reflection and I am not in any position to instruct anyone what they should do. I am not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. My post can only be a reference for your further research and growth. By reading this post, you acknowledge and accept that. All images and pictures were taken from google images that are free from copyright under labelled for reuse.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://fun2learn.vornix.blog/2019/02/20/ignorance-is-not-an-excuse-for-crime/