Annually during the Faculty and Staff Preparation Week employees participate in a Child Safeguarding workshop to refresh ourselves about the importance of keeping students safe. This year we are having both sessions for academic staff (teachers, teacher assistants, and assistants) and support staff (guards, housekeepers, maintenance, grounds crew, business office). In my remarks to open the session, I mentioned the following key points:
- This session is more than compliance, it is a reminder of our collective responsibility of keeping students safe.
- We are responsible not only for physical safety but also emotional and psychological safety.
- TIS has a legal and ethical responsibility to safeguard children. We adhere to international school standards set forth by our two accrediting agencies, CIS and NEASC and Uzbek and International Law.
- TIS has an additional challenge in safeguarding children because of the different languages and cultures. What is acceptable in one culture, might be acceptable in another culture when it comes to parenting.
My key takeaway from the session was how the Child Safeguarding Team will follow up with teachers and others reporting disclosures. We get a lot of reports and there are some confidentiality concerns. The team this year will work on this.
Finally, for outside readers, I would like to define ‘safeguarding” as all programs, initiatives, practices, polices that a school does to keep students safe. “Protection” means actions taken to protect a child once there is a disclosure or report is made.
TIS Director's Blog 
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