South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Peeking into home life of students
Teachers on lookout for child abuse signs during online classes
Christi Brouder had finally gotten her 10-year-old daughter settled on the hallway floor with a laptop and signed into a video class on GoogleMeet when the girl’s 6-year-old brother leaped over the computer screen “in his birthday suit” to get a juice box.
To Brouder’s surprise, a social worker from the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families called her later that day; someone had reported an adult male exposing himself during the class. That was followed by a visit from a police detective sent by the school to do an in-person wellness check.
Brouder explained that her son has epilepsy and autism and sometimes takes his clothes off to feel more comfortable and the inquiry ended there.
But the experience left the mother in the city of Haverhill incensed, and underscores the challenge on educators to make judgments based on fleeting scenes or sounds from a webcam.
“The teachers never asked to speak to me. Nobody said anything” during the class, Brouder said.
Child protection laws require school personnel, along with health careworkers and other professionals, to report any suspicions of neglect or abuse. The pandemic and virtual instruction have only raised the stakes; in the absence of daily in-person school, a teacher’s video contact may offer the only window to spot potential problems in students’ lives.
Many school districts that are still providing classes online have asked teachers to be on the lookout in students’ backdrops for ob
jects such as drug paraphernalia, caregiverswhoappear to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and children with injuries or poor hygiene or who are being demeaned regularly by adults.
It can be a difficult call. “Do I look at that child and say, ‘Oh, he looks underfed?’ ” said Jennifer Ryan, a middle school teacher in the Connetquot Central School district on Long Island in NewYork.
“I’m making an assumption based on the tiny square that I have in view,” said Ryan, who teaches half her students in person while the other half tune in remotely.
Ryan said her colleagues have encountered loud, profane arguments in students’ homes that are audible not only to teachers, but classmates. Some of the children
attending school only remotely already were on the radar of child protection agencies, she said.
“We are mandated reporters, but observing anything at this distance is nearly impossible,” she said.
Advocates worried about a sharp drop in reported cases of possible child endangerment when the coronavirus shutdownschools in the spring. Teachers and other professionals who came into contact with a child through their jobs made about two-thirds of the 4.3 million reports that U.S. child protection agencies received in 2018, federal data shows.
“Wecanviewthis as a real negative while kids aren’t in school, and that is true, but we can also look at it from the perspective of, we’ve never had this much inside
access into a student’s home life,” said ChrisNewlin, executive director of the National Children’s Advocacy Center.
The NCAC and others have issued guidelines to help teachers identifywarning signs in unfamiliar settings, advising them to be alert for students who appear to be unsupervised and to pay attention to how students interact with others in the home.
“There’s an opportunity for teachers to still see their kids and see if they have any injuries, very obvious things,” Newlin said, “but also what’s in the background.”
In some cases, it’s what teachers don’t see that is alarming, particularly when studentsrepeatedlymissvirtual school.
The school system in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, asked local police to check on two girls, ages 5 and 8, whowere givenlaptops but not logging in at class time. Officers found the sistershomealone and were there when the mother returned home intoxicated, police said. She was charged with neglect.
Elsewhere, parents have pushed back at educational neglect allegations reported against them because students have missed class too many times.
Educators should be reasonable but not shy away from reporting things that make them uneasy, said Wendy Rock, a former school counselor who now teaches at Southeastern LouisianaUniversity.
“Aparent yelling at a child is not abuse. This is a stressful time,” Rock said. “But if a teacher sees some
thing that gives them the feeling that the child is in danger, at the very least they need to consult with the school counselor.”
An elementary school teacher inWarwick County, Florida, didn’t have time to sound a warning on the first day of school inAugust.
Behind a 10-year-old girl attending class online, the teacher and other students heard a commotion unnerving enough that the teacher muted the girl’s audio.
The teacher saw the girl cover her ears before the child’s video window went blank. Investigators would later explain that a bullet had struck the student’s computer when her mother was fatally shot in front of the girl, her three siblings and her two cousins. The mother’s ex-boyfriend was charged with murder.