Analysis of an Incident with Viewing Pornography in a Computer Class - Essay Example

? Evaluating Teachers Assignment In respect of the allegations brought forward against Miss Paulson, I have decided to take the following actions to ensure such incidents are never repeated in the school and to instil discipline among the students and staff members. Immediate actions I have ordered for relieving of Miss Paulson duties in the concerned class till the investigations are completed, she will be replaced by another teacher who has a less busy schedule To add on to that investigations will begin immediately led by a team of 2 teaches and an officer from the education superintendent’s office. Bearing in mind that Miss Paulson had received adequate points in her previous evaluation despite having some difficulty in managing classes goes to point out some issues in the evaluation that have to be addressed within the shortest time possible to avid the recurrence of some incidents as the one she was involved in. The officers responsible for evaluation have shown clearly that they are too lenient during their evaluation sessions. Secondly, there has been a poor teacher supervision structure, which led me to find Miss Paulson attending to individual students leaving the rest of the class unattended, which was also not reported. In this case, the state requires that teachers should be evaluated annually although tenured teachers can even be evaluated once in three years or a twice in a decade, in Ms Paulson’s case, evaluation was done within the stipulated timeframe by the law. In this case, a formal investigation is not necessary as such, incident has never been reported in the school; however, some form of internal (within the school) investigation must take place. Steps to be taken in investigating the incident Wednesday morning constitute an investigating panel Wednesday afternoon the panel to identify the students and staff to be interviewed Thursday morning interviewing of the students Thursday afternoon interviewing of staff members Friday morning Investigating panel meets to draw conclusion and finalise on the investigations. Friday afternoon the principal receives the finding of the Investigations and hands them over to the superintendent. Monday morning official communication from the school is received by the parent of Jessica Robertson The students and staff to be interviewed will be selected depending on their probability of having some information relating to the incident. Among those to be interviewed will be Jessica Robertson since she is the complainant and will provide insight on the incident, which involve the pornographic pictures in class. In addition, the class monitor will be interviewed as he is in charge of the class when the teacher is not around. Those on the front row of the class will also have to be among those to be interviewed since they may have seen who interfered with Miss Paulson’s computer. Miss Paulson will also be interviewed to give her side of the story and what happened on the material day and time; any other staff member who was responsible in setting up of the projector will also have to be interviewed to get the clear picture of all that happened. The interviews will be oral to enable the panel read the body language and will be conducted with utmost confidentiality to ensure the respondents open up on the incident. The panel will have to undergo an oath of secrecy before the district attorney to ensure confidentiality of all the information. Miss Paulson will continue to teach other classes and will not be subjected to any discrimination until investigations are complete Since the investigation will be done internally, any correspondence with the media and community will be done by the principal so as to avoid any form of miscommunication or misstatement. 2.) Evaluation of the conduct of professionals needs to be understood from the activities in which they engage themselves and the manner in which they carry themselves out in performing their duties. This means that any activity of a professional has to be put into assessment to determine whether they are in accordance to the set out standards of professionalism. If the conduct of a professional is questionable, actions are taken some times to ensure that they are corrected before they can lead to poor display to the other professionals working in the same team or to protect the image of an institution from public ridicule. Although it may not be initially set out as a way of measuring the effectiveness of performance and conduct, once an issue arises, assessment can be done for the things that are done. In the case of Miss Paulson, who was involved in a situation where a parent complained that her child was exposed to pornographic pictures, it is not supposed to be counted as a method of measuring the adequacy in classroom. However, some people also could categorize this issue as negligence of the teacher, where she could have been considered to have failed her duties of supervision in class. Evaluation of this issue can show that this is not a case of inadequacy in class but it shows that students are learning to use technology as they are taught. This is because the students are able to apply the knowledge they acquire through training by Miss Paulson to do some other activities in their life. This can explain why a child in class was exposed to pornographic pictures which are not created by the teacher but by a student, on his or her own without the guidance of a teacher (Galbraith, & Jones, 2006). This means that Miss Paulson is adequate in class but is negligent of the things that happen within the class in which she is teaching for she lost control of what the students could displayed on the projector. Negligence could also be determined through her conduct when the picture was projected in which she did not take any action on the student who created it. Mrs. Robertson, the mother of the student who was exposed to the pornographic pictures, has threatened to report the case to the media if there is no action that will be taken against Miss Paulson within a week. On the side of Miss Paulson, her name risk to be tainted because she is likely to be termed immoral for allowing access of pornographic information to young children (Kelley, Thornton & Daugherty, 2005). Another consequence for Miss Paulson is the loss of trust she had gotten from the students or from other staff members of the school she was teaching. This is because the students will start to perceive her from a perspective of a person who does not deserve respect from the community. This is because the Miss Paulson is likely to be ridiculed by very many people within the school community as well as those from the public, who will get the information about the issue. Another consequence of the issue facing Miss Paulson is that she may be fired from the school she is teaching because the parents of the school may pile pressure to do away with her. This firing will be possible if she will not be able to defend herself from the allegations that are raised against her morality as a teacher to young boys and girls in a society that does not support display pornographic materials. In order to ensure that all the professional within an institution to perform in an acceptable way, there is need to implement a framework of conduct that will ensure that all the people will be in a position to follow. This means that the administrators of an institution have obligation to formulate policies that can be the main goals of any worker within it. The principal in Miss Paulson’s school failed to perform his duty of offering the guidelines on the conduct of a person who is to be involved in any form of training in that institution. On the other hand, supervision of instruction is not done in the right way considering that the information about pornographic pictures got to him through the parent of a student instead of having it from one of the student in the school. This implies that he has lost control on the things that are taught to students in his school at any given time and this means that he is likely to be incapable of addressing the issues in the right way (Kelley, Thornton & Daugherty, 2005). In relation to professionalism, Miss Paulson will need to understand the ethical requirements of her occupation, which will help her to cope with all the members of the public. She will also need to develop in terms of supervision of students around her so that she can monitor any issue of misconduct of any of her students and take the most appropriate action on any of such behavior. When she has been able to address the issues of supervision of students within the class, she can be allowed to continue in her teaching career. This should be done under the supervision of the school principal who will need to inform her of the basic ways of behavior that should be witnessed while teaching in a class in that particular school (Kelley, Thornton & Daugherty, 2005). In order to reestablish the confidence and trust of parents and students in Miss Paulson’s ability, it would be inevitable for her to apologize to the whole fraternity of students and parents. To ensure that they do not take offense in her conduct, it would be necessary for the principal of the school to take an initiative to explain to the parents the whole issue in defense of Miss Paulson. Also, if the parent of the daughter who was exposed to phonography was involved to explain the outcome of the investigation, it would be possible to have the other parents to understand the issue that happened and assure them that measures that are put in place to prevent a repetition of the same. 3.) Principal Rockwood Middle school, 2598CA, Rockwood, 27th October. Mrs. Robertson, mother of Jessica Robertson Re: Porno in Computer Class Following your letter to the superintendent on exposure of your daughter Jessica Robertson to pornographic pictures in class, we conducted a thorough investigation to get to the root cause of the incident. It was established that the students who had been left unattended downloaded the pictures from the internet. Following this, the computer class teacher Miss Paulson was suspended on the investigation period but was later reinstated with a stern warning of interdiction if such incident recurs in her class. The students responsible were sent on a two-week suspension from the school after which they will be assigned to a counsellor to help them stop the deviant behaviour. We highly regret the incident and the psychological trauma it caused Jessica and by extension you, we promise such incidents will never happen again in the near future. Yours sincerely, Principal, Rockwood middle school The information disclosed above to Mrs Robertson has been based on the need to build trust with the parents and to assure to them of our commitment to uphold moral values in our institution. Secondly, we would not wish to spoil our reputation to the community therefore, we chose to communicate to her only the information we deemed necessary for her to know. References Galbraith, M. W. & Jones, M. S., (2006). The Art and Science of Teaching Developmental Mathematics: Building Perspective Through Dialogue. Journal of Developmental Education. Volume 30, Issue 2 Kelley, R. C., Thornton, B. & Daugherty, R., (2005). Relationships Between Measures of Leadership and School Climate. Education Vol. 126 No. 1 Read More