stealing

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Home : 2002 : February : 14

stealing
By Carolyn

I had something stolen from my science kit a few weeks ago. One thing I think may help is to say something like: I have counted all of the science kit materials and one of them seems to be missing. Did anyone forget to
turn theirs in? In doing that, you are not accusing the child of stealing outright. He can save face by saying something like: "Oh, yeah, I did forget to return mine." As it turned out, even after I asked, the material was not turned in. What I ended up doing was writing a letter to parents to inform them of what happened in the classroom, how I was disappointed to see the material disappear,

and how important it was for them to speak with their children about not taking things which belong to the classroom.

I once knew a very nice teacher who tried to shame her children into admitting who a thief was. She very nicely said: "It makes me sad that one member of my family has taken something that belongs to all of us. If you'd like to return it, you can leave it on my desk when nobody is looking."

One time last year, some money was stolen from a child in my classroom. The guidance counselor came up with the solution to pass around a bag. The children lined up and stuck their hand into the bag. That way, the child who stole the money had the chance to return it without being known. Well, at the end of the line, the bag was still empty, so we concluded that either the child didn't have the courage to put it back, didn't want to put it back, or the one who claimed that his money was stolen actually lost it.

Kids are pretty bad sometimes about stealing candy. The really sad thing is that many of them don't think of taking candy from the teacher's desk as stealing. I had a whole bag of Jolly Rancher candy stolen from my desk one year. I believed (knowing the character of the children) that they thought they were just "having some," not stealing.

One teacher in my school had something stolen from her earlier this year. Her response to this was to have the kids open their bookbags and do a search. She also called the local police department to send an officer to speak with the kids about stealing. (This is a small town.)

Good luck. It's sad that you have to lock everything away.