Kate,
You relate such powerful experiences. You are right-the situations you describe leave every one in a terrible quandary. The one that really got to me, was the situation that you described where the abused woman left the class, and the abuser stayed... And you are right-policies are often "nice" on paper, but in reality often don't get played out...
I have two wonders about the situations you describe. I wonder what it is like for students to be paired with other students known as violent. I also wonder what teachers to do take care of their own emotional and psychological needs when faced with situations such as these.
Thanks for sharing!
Daphne


>>> Kate Nonesuch <Kate.Nonesuch at viu.ca> 12/20/08 10:08 PM >>>

Daphne,
At least four times in my 20 odd years of teaching ABE I have had couples in my classroom and found out over the course of the term (sometimes in the first week) that the man was assaulting the woman in the couple. Once I helped her get away to a safe house.  Once she left the class and the man stayed.  Once they both stayed for a few months in the class.  Once I was able to move him to another class and keep the woman in my class, although they continued to live together. 
The situation leaves the teacher in a terrible quandary.  You can't legally kick someone out of your class because he is a perpetrator, unless he is in violation of the law because of it.  In order to teach him, you have to be on his side, and how can you be on his side?  I don't want to ignore the fact of the violence, but I worry that I might say or do something in class that would result in him taking out his anger at me on her, outside of class. 
The most fruitful thing I was able to do was to make it clear in private to the woman that I knew she did not deserve to be treated that way, and to let her know about community resources that were available.  I had a discussion with colleagues and we reached an agreement that as a policy in such couples, in the event of them splitting up, we would facilitate the victim's remaining in class rather than the perpetrator; this was a nice policy, but in fact it never worked out in practice.    
As for other students knowing about who is a perpetrator, they know more than I do.  I teach in a relatively small community, and most of my students have lived here for most of their lives.  They know about each other's private lives in a way that I can never know. They know or know of the women who live with the men in my classes.  They know what is going on, yet as part of the class, I ask them to work in groups or in pairs with men who they know are violent, even if it never shows in class.   

Kate Nonesuch
Victoria, BC
kate.nonesuch at viu.ca
(250) 381-1824



From: Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt
Sent: Sat 12/20/2008 3:46 PM
To: The Diversity and Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [Diversity 278] Re: abusers in our classrooms


Daphne, Do you think you scared people when you said you might have perpetrators in the class?  I know that would have freaked me right out if I were a student.  It's not something many of us like to think about.  


On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 5:04 PM, Daphne Greenberg <alcdgg at langate.gsu.edu> wrote:

The recent request for textbooks on family violence has reminded me that I have been meaning to share and seek feedback from this list regarding a realization that I have had recently.

A few weeks ago, my graduate class on adult learning read an article which talked about students and instructors sharing trauma in the classroom. This sparked many reactions for students in my classroom and I shared the following:

I have two minds about this topic. On the one hand, most instructors are not counselors/therapists, and sharing about trauma in a class that is not focused on that can be very triggering to survivors of abuse. In every class, depending on how large the class is, there is guaranteed to be one or more survivors of abuse, and therefore it may not be such a great idea. On the other hand, until we start to talk openly about this, society can go on pretending that it is not as common as it really is, and in a sense continue to facilitate the occurrence of abuse because it is seen as something that happens to "the other" and not a common day occurrence of so many people that we come into contact with.

While I was saying the above, I said something like, due to the numbers in this class I am sure that we have survivors of abuse. Based on the numbers, I don't know if we have perpetrators of abuse, because I don't know the statistics of the numbers of abusers in our society. But there is a possibility that there is at least one "perpetrator" of abuse in this class-because we like to have a myth around who is and can be a perpetrator-but it is only a myth. Perpetrators can be well educated, they can be friendly, they can be likable, etc., etc. They can be one of us. Just like survivors are one of us.

The realization that I had after this class, was the deep understanding that chances are abusers are amongst our very midst, not just in our neighborhoods, but in our professional lives. At my most recent faculty meeting of easily 200 or more people, I suddenly deeply realized that in this audience there is a good chance that there is someone who could be a child molester, a partner abuser, a rapist, etc., etc. I realized that out of all the students that I have taught and will continue to come into contact with, there will be someone who has or is perpetuating abuse. It made me realize that just as there are survivors on this list, there may also be perpetrators. These realizations hit me hard.

We often talk about the importance of realizing that some of our adult literacy students may have endured or may be enduring violence. It seems that we rarely talk about the fact that some of our adult literacy students may have perpetuated or be currently perpetuating abuse. I wonder why this is so. Is it easier to identify with survivors of abuse than it is to identify with perpetrators of abuse? Would acknowledging the fact that we come into contact with both survivors and perpetrators in our classrooms start to place abuse out in the open and therefore make it more of an issue that society can't ignore? What implications does it potentially have for instruction in the adult literacy classroom?

Any thoughts?

Daphne

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Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt
http://www.luxuriouschoices.net/