The Power of Educators and its Limitations

Teachers change lives. Not only do they provide the power of education and the ability to access it, but they play a crucial role in their students’ social development as well. For good or bad, teachers are the people that model empathy, kindness, and compassion for children. They not only contribute to students’ own self-worth and confidence, but they model how to treat other people as well.

Last year I decided to major in English Education and become a teacher. After exploring other subjects, taking a variety of classes, and volunteering with kids, I knew that I wanted to make an impact this way, to try to help children in their highly formative middle school years. This same year, a time of idealism and excitement for me, I read an article that left me terrified for the responsibilities of a career in teaching.

I was unable to find the exact article that I read last year, but it has been covered in recent journals. It described a highly controversial and ongoing court case against a group of L.A. Country social workers. In this case, the social workers in question were responsible for an 8-year-old boy named Gabriel who had been added to their watch lists for abuse and neglect. Through many horrifying failures in the larger system, Gabriel was brutally tortured by his mother and her boyfriend, never removed from the home, and in May of 2013, “paramedics arrived at the boy’s Palmdale home to find Gabriel not breathing. His skull was cracked, three ribs were broken and his skin was bruised and burned. He had BB pellets embedded in his lung and groin. Two teeth had been knocked out” (Etehad, Winton, 2017).

When describing the events that lead up to the child’s horrifying murder, the original article interviewed Gabriel’s teacher, Jennifer Garcia. She described seeing signs of the abuse, such as “a facial bruise the size of a half-dollar”, “facial bruises, scabs, missing tufts of hair, busted lips”, and “swollen eyes and a pockmarked face” (Etehad, Winton, 2017). Garcia was persistent in asking her student what had happened to him, and eventually he told her about how his mother and her boyfriend tortured him. Garcia followed the proper steps to take when reporting child abuse, including reporting the incidents to her principal and calling Gabriel’s social worker. However, “she began to lose confidence in child protective services as months passed and Gabriel remained with his mother” (Etehad, Winton, 2017). Gabriel continued to come to class with severe physical wounds, and even told her that his mother beat him worse after the social worker called. Garcia was trapped between the rules of a broken system and the suffering child who was injured worse when she tried to help. Gabriel’s social workers maintained that he was not in immediate danger and that they had more urgent cases that required their resources.

Obviously this was wrong. After a lifetime of abuse and suffering, Gabriel was murdered. Following his death, the social workers on his case were prosecuted for failing to protect him. And his teacher was left with the knowledge that she could not save him, despite following the rules she was given for this very situation. I can only imagine the grief she is left with, as well as the knowledge that she can not fully protect her students in a system that continues to fail. After the sentencing of the murderers, she said “she believes the entire system failed her student” (Gerber, 2018).

Teaching after the murder of one of your students, especially one you were so personally involved in trying to help, seems impossible to me. I know why I want to teach, and I am passionate about helping my future students. But I also know that I would be unable to see the rest of my class with the awareness that they were at the mercy of a larger system that was capable of failing so catastrophically.

This leads to the point of this blog post. How much power should teachers have? Obviously they are involved in students lives to help them learn, but where should their role end? Jennifer Garcia had no power to protect Gabriel, even when she was the only person in his life actually seeing what was happening to him. His social workers made decisions based on casework and visits to his house, where his abusers were in control, but Mrs. Garcia actually spoke to Gabriel when he was able to tell the truth. This ability of teachers to speak to and understand their students gives them a unique opportunity to help.

So why should they be limited by restraints that give power to people less invested in their students’ lives? Teachers will not only have insight into a child’s home life, but they will most likely be deeply invested in the child’s well-being. As a future teacher, I want the power to help my students in these situations.

Of course, giving teachers more power in their students’ lives comes with considerable complications. Dana Goldstein writes in The Teacher Wars about the history of power imbalances in the education system, specifically in the New York in the seventies, when “Teachers felt very vulnerable because [in the typical public school] they weren’t free to make decisions. And here were parents coming to say, ‘we want to make decisions!’ So we both got militant at the same moment. We were fighting each other for a piece of the pie” (Goldstein, 162). Teachers getting more power takes that control from parents, and obviously most will not be fine with that. But I keep thinking about Mrs. Garcia, left with the knowledge that she did everything ‘right’, yet dealing with the death of an eight-year-old that she was unable to help.

I do not know how to remedy this situation, or how to change the legal system in the perfect way to ensure that teachers will be able to stop abuse in the future. I know that our systems are in place to try to help kids, and that most of us are just trying to do our jobs. But something is fundamentally wrong with the larger system at play when adults, in professions specifically designed to help children, fail to do so despite clear evidence of severe abuse. In this time of extreme college idealism, I hope that my peers and I can be aware of these failures, and prepare ourselves to break the rules if need be. Whether this means changing laws, or allowing teachers to have more power in situations to protect their students, no child should be left at the mercy of abusive adults in their lives.

For anyone interested in the results of the court cases mentioned above:

This link covers the prosecution of the social workers in question: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-gabriel-fernandez-social-workers-abuse-20180913-story.html

This link describes the aftermath of the murder and the sentencing of the murderers: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-gabriel-fernandez-sentencing-20180607-story.html

Works Cited:

“4 L.A. County Social Workers to Face Trial in Horrific Death of 8-Year-Old Boy.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 20 Mar. 2017, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-social-worker-charges-20170320-story.html.

“’Nothing Short of Evil’: Judge Sentences Mother to Life in Prison and Her Boyfriend to Death in Gabriel Fernandez Murder Case.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2018, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-gabriel-fernandez-sentencing-20180607-story.html.

Goldstein, Dana, author. The Teacher Wars : a History of America’s Most Embattled Profession. New York :Doubleday, 2014.