Just a quick entry in response to two articles given out at the end of class today:
- From cocaine to incarceration (October 14, 2007)
- CBC: FBI trip led to Labrador child porn charges (March 15, 2010)
After the initial shock of reading the two articles above, I really started to think about the message. First of all, I couldn't believe that a teacher who was in jail for cocaine trafficking was prepared to go back to teaching after his almost two year jail sentence. Secondly, I felt sick to my stomach after reading about the teacher in Labrador's child porn charges. But then I took a step back and had a "Huh??" moment...
Both articles stated the profession of the men being charged with a crime, but both crimes had no connection to their current (at the time) jobs or places of work. The article about the west coast man states that Mr. Cook said "even the judge presiding over his case felt that children were not involved with the drug abuse or trafficking", and in the Labrador story, Sgt. Newell said that "the child pornography did not involve any victims from Newfoundland and Labrador". After reading this, I checked a local news website which almost always has some story dealing with drugs on the island, and I checked the main page of the Telegram website and found the following:
I found it interesting that two articles about similar crimes mention what is being investigated, but not the professions or names of the individuals involved. This may be a case of over-thinking on my part, but I think this really exemplifies the fact that teachers will always be under scrutiny in the public eye, and should always act under our legal obligations in our teaching code of ethics (NL code of ethics found here).
Teachers are role models. We always have to be aware of our choices.
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