IED Discussion

On a placement day in early October, I had a very striking experience.  Adam's class was discussing the Paralympics and the question of how people come to be disabled arose.  While many of the responses for how were logical to the class (disease, birth defects, surgery, etc), the students had a hard time understanding how a person born healthy would lose a limb.  In giving an example, the teacher asked Adam to explain about IEDs (improvised explosive devices).

The teacher's direct approach in asking for personal experience and reflection on such a sensitive subject shocked me.  To someone new to this classroom, the direct personal interrogation (as it appeared) was extremely unprofessional.  Especially seeing as IEDs are often traumatic, a teacher asking about a student's experience with such a deadly instrument is a serious breach of privacy in the student-teacher relationship.  Thankfully I was able to quietly withhold this initial analysis because the very next week I found out that Adam had actually spoken with his teacher about the experiences he brought with him from Iraq.

As a future teacher, the experience taught me that while some elements of teacher-student relations are rigid, others can vary from student to student.  Adam's teacher was able to access his experiences because they had spoken previously about his story and he understood how Adam felt about the subject.  In the future, I don't believe that I would feel comfortable doing as Adam's teacher did, but the experience showed me that subjects that are inappropriate at times can be acceptable at others depending on previous conversations between a student and their teacher.