My name is David, and I am a kindergarten teacher. Every time I read another headline about Joshua Dale Brown, my stomach drops. It’s not just the horror of the allegations themselves – though that’s devastating enough. It’s knowing that the parents of the children I teach are reading these same articles. It’s imagining the quiet alarm they must feel, the questions they might not voice, the shadows of doubt that may now creep into what used to be trust.
It’s deeply personal. I know that as a man working in early childhood education, I already carry a weight of suspicion that my female colleagues never have to shoulder. I see the difference when I’m introduced at enrolment interviews. I am acutely aware of it when I approach a child crying in the yard. I feel the hesitation, however slight, before a parent leaves their child with me for the first time – not always, but often enough. And I get it – I do. We live in a world that has given them reason to be cautious. But it doesn’t make it any less painful to live beneath that constant cloud of implication.
