Classes are back underway, and I’m taking one on legal issues for teachers. The first reading concerns legal conflicts between No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which strikes me more as a legal issue for school administrators, but looking ahead indicates we’ll be looking at problems individual teachers must face, as well, like harassment and where the boundaries of physical contact lie.
The subject fills me with trepidation. It’s like my 7th grade shop class.
Shop was filled with power tools—potentially dangerous, if not treated with the necessary caution. Since Mr. Stump had to deal with twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, a demographic not generally known for caution and common sense, he drove the point home with a variety of horror stories, beginning with how he lost his own index finger to a band saw. The overall effect on me was one of terror. To hell with a pencil holder; I’d rather keep all my digits and limbs, thank you very much. At times, my caution became dangerous in itself; in keeping as far as possible from the working parts, I sometimes failed to keep a firm grip on the wooden block, which could therefore fly loose or jam the machinery.
Fortunately, it never did, though I’m still afraid of power tools. Like a wrongful lawsuit for molestation, losing body parts is a rare occurrence even over a lifetime of power tool use. Carelessness dramatically raises the chances of an accident, but that might be a rise from one-in-a-million to one-in-ten-thousand. Similarly, any teacher who behaves himself is highly unlikely to get embroiled in a legal kerfuffle or career-ending scandal. Human psychology, however—even a math teacher’s psychology—when presented with a grossly improbably danger or reward, is generally quite poor at estimating those odds accurately. We’re not wired for it. That’s why flight insurance and lotteries continue to rake in the dough. So, although it’s important to know of the legal dangers to teachers, I’m not looking forward to getting all paranoid about all the ways teaching can go hideously wrong. It might get in the way of the ways teaching can go right.
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