AITA for performing a wellness check on a student?
I (~30M) am a science teacher at a high school. It's great getting to introduce these students to some fascinating concepts in science and expand their horizons, but there is one student, S, who has taken to it in a bit of an odd fashion. She (16F) can be a little obtuse in class, sometimes trying to contradict what I or her other teachers say. She has these moments that make me feel like she's leagues ahead of the rest of her class, and maybe even me, but she simply hasn't been turning in her homework, which has me concerned.
The other day, one of my colleagues, B (~30F) approached me and asked about S. Apparently I'm not the only one who's noticed that S can be a bit odd sometimes. B has been worried, and asked S if everything was alright at home and if she could potentially visit and make sure. But she said S told her that her grandfather doesn't like strangers so it wouldn't work. But her grandfather is apparently a doctor, who I'd think would have to interact with strangers regularly??? I'm not sure what to make of that. B tried to swing by S's home anyways, but there was no house at that address? There was enough there that B and I were seriously concerned.
Which brings me to the part where we may be assholes. See, B had an idea to… well, follow S home. By the time school got out, it was dark and we didn't want her walking home alone, so we offered to accompany her, but she refused. B and I drove ahead to her address to see if this was in fact where she lived. There may have been better approaches if we'd taken the time to think about it, but we were really concerned for her in the moment and thought there might be something bad or fishy going on and neither of us want S to come to harm.
Eventually we saw her enter this abandoned lot and we went in after her, but she was nowhere to be seen! There was a cranky old man who we thought might have kidnapped her. He tried to goad us into calling the police. I almost did, too, before we heard S cry out. B and I followed her voice and ended up inside her home. Apparently, that cranky old man was her grandfather and he was pretty pissed that we had just barged in on him. I understand where he was coming from, and I've honestly been second-guessing whether we did the right thing. As I'm posting this, he's taken us back in time to the Stone Age in his time machine (which I thought was just a blue police box at first), which feels like a bit of an overreaction, but I'm not sure.
Am I (or are we) The Asshole(s) for trying to look after one of our students who was behaving strangely?
AITA?
YTA
NTA
JAH
NAH
ESH
INFO
[TARDIS noises in the distance]
Voting ended onNov 27, 2023
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