Complicated boundaries protect pupils and educators

No doubt principals and teachers have to be many things for their students.

Their adviser. Their problem-solver. Their trusted adult. Their champion.

But there are parts even the most empathetic educators must not play, spelled out in policies and training sessions seemingly ad infinitum in an education world long scarred by adults crossing boundaries with vulnerable youth.

You are not friends, said Missouri School Boards’ Association attorney Kelli Hopkins. You are not secret confidants.

“That is not your role,” she said.

Private meetings, gift-giving, texting — when parents or other adults don’t know — bear the signs of a “groomer,” Hopkins said. That’s how an adult nurtures a relationship with a student that can become criminal behavior.

But just the appearance of grooming puts lives and careers at risk.

When Smithville High School Principal Rudy Papenfuhs was placed on paid administrative leave last week under district accusations of inappropriate student contact, it raised anew the complicated boundaries between trusted adults and their students.

Papenfuhs has not been accused of any criminal acts or any inappropriate physical contact, but the district laid out multiple claims of policy violations.

The district said the principal took individual students alone to sporting events without any parent or other adult, gave students car rides alone, let students drive his car, bought a student a car, shared prescribed medications with students, shared inappropriate videos and texts, and put a student on his cellphone plan.

Meanwhile, many Smithville students have rallied in support of the principal, whom they say is being punished for his caring and generosity. Papenfuhs has not responded to requests for comment.

Communities almost universally know of situations in which educator and student relationships crossed the line. Schools stand at a state of heightened concern, setting strict policies, knowing that most educators have only honorable intentions in their relationships with students.

The reason for the concern, said schools’ consultant Terry Abbott, chairman of Houston-based Drive West Communications, is that “we have a crisis on our hands.”

Abbott tracks nationwide the number of cases in which school employees are charged or convicted for inappropriate contact with students.

As of Sept. 24, he said, 563 cases nationwide have been reported this year, including 14 in Missouri and Kansas. Men are more often accused, representing 64 percent of the cases, while women have been named in 36 percent.

More than a third of the cases involved social media or text messaging contact.

“Every educator in the country should be extremely concerned about this issue and looking for ways to deal with it,” Abbott said. “When we have 15 cases a week of teachers sexually assaulting or becoming involved in inappropriate relationships with students, that’s appalling and downright shameful.”

David P. Thompson, a former teacher and administrator in San Antonio, Texas, who consults with schools, understands what most teachers are trying to do when they near the boundaries of relationships.

“The most important thing you do is establish relationships with your students,” said Thompson, professor of educational leadership at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “It’s how you work with them. You have to be successful as a teacher.”

“(But) the ethical boundary has to be impenetrable,” he said. “It’s not as gray as people might think.”

Rarely do educators fall into trouble for lack of clear policies, consultants said. Smithville has its policy, like most districts, derived from the work of state school boards’ associations.

Help for schools abounds, including from the major insurance provider United Educators, which provides boundary training resources.

Missteps, Thompson said, usually result from “lapses of reason.”

“It’s easy to get drawn in out of sympathy for what a student is going through,” he said. “People get in over their head, and before they know it they are doing something they said they would never do.”

Social media is certainly complicating things, said Vincenzo Iuppa, an attorney for the Missouri chapter of the National Education Association teachers’ union.

Teachers know that their students are very much living in that digital world, and teachers are trying “to get to them where they are and leverage it for educational purposes,” Iuppa said.

The online world presents another place where, as in the classroom, the teacher is on the front line and often the first adult to know a student is having outside problems.

The primary advice is to never go alone into a child’s situation, and know when to hand the problem over to other adults, he said. The schools have counselors and social workers. Children have other family members.

“Teachers back themselves into trouble sometimes when they are trying to help students,” he said. “The hardest thing is that sometimes (after getting others involved) the teacher needs to step away.”

There can be exceptions, Hopkins said. But no secret exceptions.

If a teacher sees a unique opportunity to help a student with a gift, ask a supervisor first, she said.

If, at the end of an after-school activity, the teacher is standing alone outside the school with the one child whose parent forgot to come get him and the parent can’t be reached, the teacher can give the child a ride home. But call or send a note to a supervisor about what is happening, and mark the time, Hopkins said.

If you’re using a Facebook page to build a class project, tell administrators and parents and give them access. Do not “friend” any students.

If you’re using Twitter to share classroom information, tell parents and let students follow you, but do not follow any students back.

You empathize with students, but you don’t identify with them, Hopkins said. “No swapping personal stories,” she said.

A lot is at stake, said KarenAnn Broe, who heads learning program development at United Educators, so anyone with concerns needs to tell someone.

The insurance company’s research shows that fewer than 1 in 10 of the cases of misconduct with children involves an adult with any evidence of having a predisposition to attack.

It’s more often a case of not understanding or following a boundary, she said. Telling someone early on when a line may be crossed opens the chance to intervene before anything goes too far.

Teachers may be uncomfortable reporting on a colleague, Broe said, but opening that conversation “protects that teacher as well as the school’s reputation — and it protects the child.”

Training should be applied as an ongoing discussion, she said. Especially with new teachers who may not be much older than their students. An open air encourages teachers to continually consider boundaries and think through real scenarios with mentors.

“The bottom line message,” she said, “is when in doubt, report. That goes for teachers, parents and children. If you see something that doesn’t feel right, say something.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2014 at 9:21 PM with the headline "Complicated boundaries protect pupils and educators."