Giving Voice to the Impacts of Values Education The Final Report of ...

Story 5: Teacher story
I’ve got a boy in my class who’s in [social welfare]
care. He’s been there for about two years now.
Previously he owned the behaviours of his
parents, so it was, you know, all the things that
had happened and all the stuff that he witnessed
and was, you know, part of, he took that on
himself and he didn’t see that his parents had
done anything wrong, and he blamed social
welfare for taking them away and all those sorts
of things.
We started doing just pastoral care activities,
talking about all the values that we look at, and
then this term we’ve gone into it. The unit of
work is, you know, the values unit of work and
then we’ve got the literacy also tied to it. As part
of my listening and speaking activity – it was oral
storytelling – so I had to tell my partner the story
and my partner had to tell that story back to the
class. He went off with his friend, and he went
outside and he told them the story of his dad
and what his dad used to do to them and stuff
like that.
Afterwards, I didn’t know until they were about
to present it and I read the book and I was like
‘You probably can’t tell that’, and I called them
both over and said ‘Do you understand what’s
happened here’ and he said ‘I know that these
things happen and I know that this was my
dad’s choice. He did this. And I’m not wrong and
this is not bad, and this doesn’t reflect on me in
any way. This was my dad’s choice’. But in class
prior to that, we talk a lot about making your
choices and a part of what we’re doing is, you
know, you choose your behaviour, you choose
your consequences, no one else has any bearing
over what you do apart from yourself – ‘The only
one responsible for your behaviour is you’. And
he said that back to me, like that exact line, like
‘No one else is responsible for dad’s behaviour
but dad’ so for that big change in him from, you
know, this kid two years ago, that social welfare
were bastards and all these horrible words he
used to call them, to now that’s dad’s, and not
even anything bad about dad, just ‘Dad has
chosen this life. Dad did this to us’. So I think for
him it’s going to take him a long way, just being
part of this because he was a real angry, wound
up, nothing, everything about him had to be
fair and fair to benefit him. Now it’s ‘If I’ve done
something wrong, that’s what I’ve done’ but
the biggest significant change was that he was
like ‘No, that’s not who I am and I don’t care if
everyone knows what happened to me’.
Why it is [the most significant change] I think
just seeing where he’s come from. I taught this
boy in transition and I saw his parents have
a fight outside my classroom. So he’s been
immersed in this life for years and years and
years and years. Now he’s taken away from that.
When he was first taken away mum and dad did
nothing wrong. He would do anything to get back
to mum and dad. Anything at all. He didn’t see
that that lifestyle was wrong. He didn’t see what
they were doing was wrong, he just thought
that’s how families live. So now he can see that
those things weren’t right and that’s not how a
family is, and he can also see that the behaviours
are yours. You’ve got to own those behaviours
and he sees that it’s...sorry, I’m trying to…
We do respect, responsibility and teamwork. Now
he’s seen that his dad needs to take responsibility
for his actions but he hasn’t done anything
wrong and I think he’s going to be a better
person for it. He’s going to be, probably be able to
function better in society and his outlook for life
now, the one that we had for him, is a lot broader
now. You know. Before we’d probably say he’s
going to turn out probably the same as dad. Now
he sees that it wasn’t right and his dad, that was
his dad’s stuff. He doesn’t need to own any of the
behaviours that his dad did.
Section 1: Looking for the impacts of values education
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