On Teaching and Abuse......

When it comes to child safety, we have a long-running knowledge, empathy, and concern gap.....Tonya GJ Prince

• Without teachers, the world that we live in now- with all of its advancements and understandings- would not be where and who we are today. Teachers are essential to growth.

• Most teachers are safe adults who impact Children in ways that encourage and advance them forward for a lifetime.

• Children deserve far more spaces in this world to feel safe and supported. Next to home, School ought to be at the top of that list.

• Teachers have been instrumental in making protective services aware that there may be a child dealing with abuse.

• Teachers save lives!

• Teachers change lives!

• Teachers are being emotionally and physically harmed in the jobs that they give so much to.

• Teachers are underpaid!
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• Also.......Teachers have a mandated duty to keep children safe.

• Teachers must work in concert with parents to keep children safe.

• Teachers and school boards must continue to do better at: ongoing universal background checks, paying attention to "red flags" for abuse & violence among staff & visitors, and better confidential/anonymous reporting.

• Teachers need more consistent, ongoing, expert-level, non-partisan, non-idealogical training around child abuse, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence.

• Teachers could benefit from the support of easier access to more trained and professional healing and helping professionals in each school to aid them in attending to student needs.

• Recognition that teachers are human beings who may struggle with domestic & sexual violence issues and therefore have access to confidential helping professionals and mentors.

**Take a look at these painful and tragic stories and read for yourself why many of us who are parents, grandparents, foster parents, and others who care about children- see EVERYTHING wrong with pouring more sex into schools like running water. 

Also, 'exposing children to pornography' is an old and effective grooming tactic. It is a form of child abuse. 

As it is, we must make educational spaces safer even as we lag behind.

**Please take care of yourself and stop reading the moment that it becomes too much.