Last week’s 405 class about legal
issues happened in the midst of my family’s school and risk management story. It’s not a dramatic story, and everything has
worked out fine, but it’s certainly an example of how a teacher can be trying
to do something interesting and creative with the best of intentions but run
into risk management problems.
My daughter is 12, in 6th
grade, and goes to a small public choice school. This spring, one of her teachers has been
doing a careers unit. Each student spent
several weeks of class time researching
the career they wanted to go into – finding out about training, and job
conditions and salary etc , and it was all to culminate in a day spent jobshadowing
someone in that field.
My
daughter wants to be a pastry chef. Families
were encouraged to make use of friends in the career of interest, but the teacher
also sent an email to all the parents in the school soliciting contacts in the
various careers. Our family does not
know anyone who is a pastry chef, or a baker, or even in the food
business.
But one
day my daughter came home with a piece of paper with the name of a couple who
runs a bakery, an email address, and instructions to “show some initiative” and
contact them to set up a jobshadowing time.
I was a bit hesitant about her using her own email address to contact
them, but since my husband and I still monitor
that account, we had her go ahead. The
couple never answered the email, and my daughter followed up, but still with no
reply. Then, even though it went against the instruction
of my daughter showing initiative, my husband stopped by the bakery to
inquire. The woman at the bakery wasn’t
very enthusiastic, but it was arranged that my daughter would go in one morning
at 4am to shadow the two bakers, who were men.
And at
this point my husband and I began to get a bit uncomfortable with the whole
arrangement. No information had come
home for parents about exactly what the jobshadowing expectation was, but the
sense we were getting was that we were expected to drop my daughter off for her
to negotiate her own way through the experience. And we didn’t really like the idea of
dropping her off at 4am with 2 people we
had never met. So we emailed the teacher
to ask what she knew about the bakery – if they were personal friends, or were
part of a vocational training program, or parents from the school. We were just looking for a bit of
reassurance.
The
teacher didn’t know anything about them.
And at that point, she must have realized that she should have shared
her plans with a wider audience. She
spoke to the principal, and they together spoke to risk management. We very quickly got an email from the
principal making it clear that the jobshadowing would be at our discretion, and
that the official assignment was now just a written report on the career.
In the
meantime, we had asked around and gotten a friendly report on the bakery, they
had finally answered dauaghter’s emails in friendly, businesslike way, and the
door seemed open for my husband to stay on site during the jobshadow. And my daughter was excited to do it. So we
planned to go ahead with it. The night
before, we got a call from the teacher, who I suspect had the risk management
office on her back, saying that while at the bakery, my daughter was not to
touch anything. She could observe and
take pictures, but not go near any equipment or ovens or knives etc. My daughter has a good head on her shoulders,
and we told her of course she could help as much as they asked, unless it was
something she was uncomfortable with.
This
morning she and my husband went for the jobshadow. The bakers were fantastic, and my daughter had a great time. She braided the challah loaves. The bakers were professional but also
friendly. She truly did get a sense of
the middle of the night hard work of professional baking. It was a great educational experience, but
also certainly one which had the district risk manager sweating a bit, not to
mention my husband and I until we figured out a way to take some uncertainty
out of the situation by staying on site.
The experience leaves me wondering if it’s possible to teach a
jobshadowing unit in such a way that
risk management would give its approval. Perhaps with more communication with parents,
and with the explicit requirement/expectation stated up front that both a parent
and the child would go on the jobshadow.
But always check with the risk manager first!
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