On the Ethics of Teacher–Student Friendships

Abstract

THE DIMENSIONS OF FRIENDSHIP Fifteen years ago, when I was teaching at an elementary school in Krakow, Poland, a student became my friend. I taught his class English in fourth, and then fifth, grade, and he participated in an after-school program I ran. The school was in a gritty industrial suburb of the city, and most of the boys were, in the way of boys of such places, sweet but acquiring a pose of exterior toughness. The boy who became my friend, however, loved butterflies. He also loved art, and after I’d been teaching there for a few months, he stayed after class one day to show me some watercolor paintings he’d made of sunflowers. I loaned him a children’s book in English, and in thanks he gave me one of the sunflower paintings that I’d admired. Throughout my year and a half of teaching, he continued to show me his paintings and his photographs of butterflies, and occasionally he’d accompany me to my tram stop, explaining the key geographical features of his neighborhood, like where Tomasz broke his arm and which dumpster the older boys stood behind to smoke. Once, after some students in his class had been unusually rowdy during their English lesson, he came up to me afterwards and told me “Don’t get upset about it. They do that to all the teachers.” We never engaged in more conventional friendship activities such as socializing on weekends, sharing a wide range of details of our thoughts and lives, or asking for help with personal problems, but I thought of the relationship as a real friendship and so did Olaf. We stayed in touch over the years, and I last saw Olaf, now 27 and still photographing butterflies, when I was in Krakow last summer.