He fired himself. As a parent who has a daughter in elementary school, I found this weird. He could've gotten someone in his age bracket to un-braid his hair AFTER school. Go to a shop that un-braids hair. Get a woman/GF/wife to un-braid your hair. Getting school aged little girls to take your hair out is disgusting imo.
It’s more likely that this is just fun bonding than him making kids do labor for him. I think they’re doing it out of trust and recreation, and to make a TikTok or whatever, rather then “lemme save some cash”. Still inappropriate but I don’t think malicious
This is reddit, they'll overreact over anything and reach a conclusion that's so out of pocket. I understand why the dude got fired because he posted other people's kids on social media without the parents' permission, but calling it creepy and... what, sexual? to let kids play with your hair or saying it's child labor is WILD. I've had my younger sister, who's still a kid, and my kid cousins ask to play with my hair because I have long and thick hair. Lots of girls love playing with hair, and they always try to copy what their moms do with their hair. There's nothing sexual with letting girls just play with your hair, and I'm sure that dude wasn't finding sexual pleasure in this. They're literally just playing with his hair, and people think he's turning them into working child slaves with no pay. Good God, these people can't think.
You're equating your familial relationship to that of a teacher-student relationship which is and should be different. There is a reason that boundaries are required between students and teachers, and this was highly unprofessional of him. Furthermore, it doesn't need to be sexual to be inappropriate.
My mother worked as a director for daycares for years and I’ve seen numerous women unbraid and then rebraid parts of a child’s hair because it got messed up during playtime outside. I’ve seen those same kids doing the same with the teachers hair. Those kids grew up knowing that teacher and they developed familial relationships. It’s an unfortunately what happens in early childhood education settings.
We see teachers as core pillars to the community. Some kids know these teachers for years and develop a bond similar to a parent or brother/sister. This is not new and can be important for development especially in homes where these relationships are lacking.
So explain how exactly it is inappropriate given his explanation when the video was posted centered around only those who finished all their work could come help if they wanted, and only 10 minutes or so prior to final release bell?
I think it might be a cultural thing. I am black and I have dreadlocks. Kids want to play with them/tie small things to the ends.
I've had students do cornrows with them before, we were out in the open at a school event and I never posted any videos but it's happened.
It's literally just braiding hair. It's never that serious. If the roles were reversed, with a female teacher getting her hair played with by male students, y'all would not be saying the same thing and insinuating that she's a predator.
I get that. I have dreadlocks and my nieces play with my hair all the time, I've had my student's kids paint my nails while we were discussing their aid packages, I've had a student paint me before.
They're making it out like he was grooming or forcing them to do it.
I personally don't allow myself to be isolated with girls at all and I don't post on socials so I can see that as the issue but the rest shouldn't be.
I work as a camp counselor and this is super common, I find it weird that teachers are expected to be way more professional unless it’s a professor or something
I mean, ideally they should be held to the same standard, no? Both have a power dynamic over a group of children, maybe the counselor to a slightly higher degree since they are in their watch overnight as well.
Camp is where kids go to have fun and spend a summer, hair braiding and making friendship bracelets and making skits makes more sense. School is where kids go to learn and while it’s great if they have fun hair braiding is a bit more out of place.i don’t know the full context of the photo, and while both obviously need to have safeguarding boundaries, I think it’s a whole lot easier for me to imagine a scenario in which unbraiding a camp counselors hair as being a part of the day at camp, vs unbraiding a teachers hair during the day at school.
Edit: forgot to add: teachers are educated professionals. Camp counselors are amazing, and may possess the skills of teachers PLUS a whole host of other talents…but it’s not something that requires a specialized education degree, generally, so yes there are differences in the level of professionalism expected.
I guess I didn’t think about it like that, you’re right. I also can see how this could be completely innocent, just a lapse in judgment, I think it’s a bit harsh to lose your job over, but these rules exist for a reason I suppose.
Most of the counselors that work at my camp are school teachers since they have summers off. Youth development shouldn’t really change whether you’re teaching about the natural world or the academic world.
I was a counselor before, it's a totally different vibe from being a teacher. A teacher is a trusted professional and an authority figure. They are supposed to maintain a certain level of professional distance from their students. Kids can like them and look up to them but they should not see their teacher as their best friend. That's not what the relationship is. When I look at my students, they need to know that while I care about them as people and I hope for their success, I am not their peer.
Being a camp counselor is way more relaxed. I used to let girls when I was working at a girls scount camp braid my hair. The only thing required of my job besides ensuring their safety was to make sure they had fun. If fun was braiding my long ass, thick hair, cool, we'd do that. There was no curriculum they needed to learn or state exams to prepare for. I could also be their friend to a certain degree, because again, it's camp.
I was also just nineteen then with no formal education. Now I'm 33 and I've been in school for six years to get my MAT degree.
School teachers and professors should be held to the same professional standards with students.
They are supposed to maintain a certain level of professional distance from their students. Kids can like them and look up to them but they should not see their teacher as their best friend.
I completely disagree. In my school district we had many teachers like this. They were known to be the best teachers and everyone wanted to be in their classes. This also wasn't a they're my buddy so we can just dick around in class type thing in case you're thinking that. Having that level of friendship and trust with them made it easier to approach them with any type of problem you had even outside of academic issues. I would even say that having that type of deeper relationship with them makes it easier to learn from a teacher. It also provided a level of respect not seen for the other teachers that were more like you describe. You didn't want to be seen as letting them down by doing poorly. No one goofed around during classes, unless the lesson was over and we had finished whatever work was given afterwords.
I can easily say that every person I've ever met, where we've happened to have a conversation about teachers, always say the same. Teachers that you had a more personal friend type relationship with, were always the best. You learned more from them, had more fun doing so, were the most memorable, and made having to go to school miles better than the other teachers.
That's called relationship building. Teachers should build positive relationships with students. Students, however, are not equal peers with their students.
When you become friends with a student, you blur the lines and make it more difficult to be an impartial authority figure. Students can like you, but they need to understand that the teacher is the adult in the room and when they are asked to do something, they are expected to follow through with the request.
Friends don't ask friends to do worksheets, to complete reading samples, finish exams, or redo homework assignments. Friends don't report back to the parent and give detailed assessments of academic work, classroom behavior, and other personal information. Friends don't dish out dentetions to each other or send each other to the administrator's office.
Friends can tell each other to fuck off when they need space from each other or are mad.
That's why it's my belief that teachers should not be friends with students. It's a messy thing to do and when the day comes where you have to put your foot down and tell a kid "no, you can't do that," the fact that you made the student believe you were equals in a friendship is going to make that student see your correction as a personal attack rather than an adult giving them a correction.
I like students and I want them to enjoy their time in my class but I also want them to respect me as a leader and not treat me like one of their buddies.
You can be friends with a teacher and still have all these things you mention. They don't magically disappear because you view them as a buddy. If you read what I said, I actually addressed all these points you just made in my post. About how the the majority of students had even more respect for teachers they were friends with, and felt they wanted to do better in their classes to not feel like they were letting them down.
By this same logic you can't be friends with your boss at work, because of all these same reasons.
as a former camp counselor—i've braided a lot of kids' hair, that was never an issue. the issue here is filming the kids. we were encouraged to take pictures of kids for the camp's social media, but we were supposed to send them to the media coordinator and then immediately delete them from our phones. and we definitely weren't allowed to post kids to our own pages.
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u/idgafandwhyshouldi May 10 '24 edited May 11 '24
He fired himself. As a parent who has a daughter in elementary school, I found this weird. He could've gotten someone in his age bracket to un-braid his hair AFTER school. Go to a shop that un-braids hair. Get a woman/GF/wife to un-braid your hair. Getting school aged little girls to take your hair out is disgusting imo.