Our vulnerable charges

While teachers are preoccupied with the delivery of curriculum with all its challenges and issues of student violence and indiscipline, it is quite easy to overlook the fact that some of our charges are crying out for our love, care and attention.

Those teachers who have had to endure the loss of a student would readily attest to the fact that such loss can sometimes be very difficult to accept and causes a significant amount of introspection.

What did I miss? What signals were being sent out that eluded me? What could I have done differently? Did my actions contribute to this child’s dysfunctional state of mind? Unfortunately, by such time it’s too late, making the loss even more painful. Coping with the loss of a student can be even more challenging considering that the teacher also has to help students cope with and accept such loss.

The theorists would insist that suicide is an extreme call for help and is usually preceded by distress signals. The challenge for teachers is to be able to detect these distress signals in the early stages and make the necessary intervention.

While we are not professionally trained to make such detections, we usually rely on our personal experiences and instincts to detect those one or two students in the crowd that are silently crying out for some form of attention. While this approach may work most of the times, unfortunately we do miss some of them.

There are many reasons why children may become suicidal.

Home circumstances are very often linked to children attaining this mental state. At school, the issue of bullying and the highly competitive nature of the school system have also been linked to children contemplating suicide.

When children feel they are unable to cope, especially so if there are deficits in their social, emotional and economic circumstances, this is seen as a desperate way out.

While children are wonderful in many ways, they can unfortunately be quite mean and uncaring to each other and the vigilance of teachers is necessary to rescue students who are victims.

Against this backdrop, it is necessary to remind all teachers that first and foremost we teach human beings and they are all unique. Some are instinctively stronger than others in terms of coping with the challenges of life.

It is important that teachers are willing to make time to reach out to those that are quietly sending signals of withdrawal and depression.

We must make the time to truly know all our charges and their unique backgrounds and circumstances.

In and through teachers all children must be able to see a sense of hope. Despair and helplessness must never be allowed to prevail in their minds, especially at school. School must provide the enabling environment for social satisfaction.

We must be prepared to truly talk to our children without judging them. Guidance must be the outcome of our innate love and sense of caring, even sometimes at great personal sacrifice.

Teaching, unlike most other professions, requires an understanding and appreciation that one gives unconditional love to all our charges. Reaching out to those that are weak and vulnerable is an integral part of our modus operandi.

While it is necessary to have internal and external specialised support systems to treat with such dimensions of human devel opment , teachers cannot escape the fact that we are usually the first step in rescuing vul n e r abl e children.