Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to the power of assumptions. I am willing to bet that making assumptions is one characteristic of human beings that transcends age, race, class, and culture. As we are all fallible beings, what could be more human than projecting our views on others and being completely bewildered when their views turn out to be different?
Sitting on my side of the desk, I know that I bring my own set of assumptions to the classroom, many of which don't hold up under close scrutiny. For example, I assume that all my students go home to someone who says, "Hello, honey, how was your day?" Wait, let me back up - first off, I assume that all my kids go to their own home on school nights. I am always taken aback when students come in midweek and tell me that they stayed overnight at their friend's house, and their papers are in their friend's boyfriend's car and she won't see him again until Friday, so if you need those papers, I need a new set. I know I was kept on a pretty short leash growing up, but geez, isn't it obvious to all parents that you don't let your kids go out socializing overnight during the school week?? There you have it: Assumptions at work.
I know many of my assumptions are fundamentally unsound, and I try to keep them under control because they can be misleading - sometimes dangerously so. For example, I assume when I'm talking to parents that they're automatically on my side as one adult to another, and this is most assuredly NOT the case. I remember calling a parent once because her son was needling another kid in my class and called him a "scrub" (this was during the heyday of the TLC song "No Scrubs," and the term scrub was the worst non-profane insult the kids could use on one another at the time). The son was constantly bullying select victims and disrupting class in a sneaky, underhanded kind of way, and I knew he was picking on someone in that class, but I just hadn't caught him at it yet. This incident gave me the opening I needed to address his behavior, so I called home. When I told the mother that her son had humiliated a fellow student by using the term scrub, her reaction was, verbatim, "Well, IS he a scrub?"
I choked out an "Excuse me?", certain I hadn't heard her correctly. Was she serious?
"Well, is this kid a scrub?" she demanded, her implication clearly being that her son's actions were made justifiable by this boy's social standing. I managed to come back with "I don't think so," which was far more politically acceptable than what I wanted to say, which was, "No, but I think your son is." Fortunately, my internal censor was functioning more effectively than usual, so I didn't actually voice that out loud. And poof went my parents-will-side-with-me-always assumption.
This semester, I have a student who leaves me challenging my assumptions again. "Margie," a freshman, has already appeared in this blog as Angry Girl Who Swore At Me In Class. To put it mildly, Margie's a challenge. Margie goes through life according to her own agenda. She seems to be of at least average intelligence, but it's hard to make an accurate assessment because she never completes anything correctly. Sometimes I wonder if she understands the directions; sometimes I think she picks and chooses what she finds interesting and ignores the rest. She goes through jags of reading voraciously, usually works of young adult literature, to the exclusion of everything else going on around her (including classes). At other times, she is completely absorbed in being a social butterfly and talking to everyone around her, again to the point where she doesn't notice what else is happening in the room. And then there are stretches of time where she puts her head on her desk and won't talk to anyone. In between these periods she does a little work from time to time, if there's nothing better to do.
Furthermore, Margie has a constant chip on her shoulder. She would be a pretty girl if she didn't have a perpetual look of mulish obstinacy plastered across her face. Any direction from any kind of authority figure is likely to provoke an outburst. Even a mild request issued to the class at large, such as, "okay, guys, you need to quiet down," can spur a nasty reaction if Margie's in the wrong mood. Margie also seems to be totally unaware of what's considered acceptable behavior. If something makes her mad, she's likely to yell, "that's bullshit," or "what the fuck?" completely unself-consciously. Unlike nearly every other student I've ever had, she doesn't mutter it under her breath or clap her hand over her mouth - if she feels like saying it, she says it. Also, she's unpredictable. The same trigger event might set Margie off or get no more response than a ho-hum, and I can never tell which reaction I'm going to get. An "F" on a quiz could prompt a blue streak of profanity tomorrow; next week, another "F" gets a cursory glance on its way to being tossed in the trash can.
After a quarter of observing Margie's m.o., I've devised a strategy of working with her as best I can from a position of careful neutrality. Since she automatically distrusts and resents any kind of authority, I can't go the route of being her ally or forging a personal connection. Besides, even if I did win her over, eventually I would have to act as an authority figure and that would immediately alienate her even further. I hold Margie responsible for her outbursts, but do so with as little discussion or visible reaction on my part as possible. I try to preface bad news with neutral or positive statements, such as, "You have made up two of your five missing assignments, so your class grade has gone up fifteen points. If you make up one more assignment, you'll be passing." My approach has a 50% success rate, meaning that she doesn't swear at me, roll her eyes, or throw her work down on the desk and stomp off about half the time. A fifty percent return seems to be the best I'm going to get, so I'm sticking with it.
Margie's behavior overall is a puzzler. Sometimes I wonder if she has some kind of oppositional defiant disorder or psychological syndrome. At other times, I'm convinced she knows full well what she's doing and could choose to do otherwise. And on some days, I'm just totally unsure which end is up with this kid. To add to this little conundrum, Margie got herself in big-time hot water recently, trouble so serious that she got suspended for two weeks and everyone official is being more than normally tight-lipped about it (I had to find out what happened from the kids). Whenever someone's suspended, the school is still legally responsible for that student's education, so we all have to gather materials and make plans the kid can follow at home. [There is no reciprocal requirement that the parent actually come get the work we spend a good chunk of time assembling, or that the kid has to do the work in order to return to class, however. Oh no. It's a one-way street here in Educationville at times.] At the time of the, ahem, "incident," Margie's class was working on a project that will be 35% of the quarter grade. I sent home instructions that she was to finish the project on her own in a modified format, and it's due the day she returns. Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath.
With students like Margie, I find a phone call home usually helps me figure out what's going on. By gauging the parent's reaction (desperate, angry, resigned, frustrated, indifferent, bewildered), I can tell if this problem is typical, if it's situational, if the parents want to work with me, if they've given up. Whatever the outcome, the call itself is always very informative. According to our records, Margie lives at home with both Mom and Dad, and everyone has the same last name, so I thought this would be pretty straightforward. Well, I've tried calling home to talk to Margie's parents. No one picks up the phone. There's no answering machine. There's no email address. I tried the cell phone number and got a message recorded in a soft, mumbled monotone that didn't mention any names, so I don't know if I got hold of the right person or not. I left my name and number but have never heard back. I've had many unpleasant parent phone calls in my time, but until now, I've never actually been completely stonewalled. Why won't her parents answer the phone? Do they know it's not good news when we call, so they don't bother answering? Do they think the school is out to get their kid, so they're stonewalling? Are they under some kind of job/health/marital/financial stress that prevents them from doing more than just getting by from day to day? Do they just simply not care?
The mystery of Who Is Margie only deepens, then. Assumptions may be potentially harmful, but in a way, they do give us some kind of guidance to follow. At least if I have an assumption, I can try to prove or disprove it and go from there. But with this kid, I feel like I'm wandering around a strange room in the dark, waiting to crack my shins against the chifforobe. If I find my way, I'll let you know.
