Never Assume

I made a potentially devastating mistake in the classroom the other day: I assumed that a student knew my intentions when I said/did some things in order to make a point. I think our relationship has survived, but only time will tell.

Cell phones are a huge problem these days. The kids all have them, and they're classroom distractions of the first order. At some point, I got sick of explicitly asking students to put their cell phones away so I established a blanket rule: if I see your cell phone after class has started, I'm taking it. And when I take it, I have to give it to security who will only release the phone to the student's parent. That means that a parent has to visit the school to get the student's phone back. Ouch.

It's been a pretty good deterrent, but students are highly adept at rationalizing illegal behavior. For example:

"Ok, give me your phone."
"But I was just using the calculator on it."
"Did I say, 'never use your phone in class,' or 'never use your phone in class unless you think is ok'?"
"Ok, ok. I'll put it away."
"Actually, your option to put it away expired when the bell rang. Now I'll take it."
"What??? That's not fair!!!"

Etc, etc, etc.

Surprisingly, that can happen more than once in the same class period with different students. It's really amazing how slowly they learn when they don't want to, but I digress.

One day a really good, conscientious kid took his phone out near the end of class to take a picture of the notes I had written on the board. If ever there were an honest mistake and a reason to use one's phone in class of which I would approve, this was it. But the rule was broken, and had to be enforced. (There's no quicker path to irrelevance than not enforcing your own rules.) He was really upset, and I was sorry to take his phone. So I took him to his dean's office and explained the situation. I gave the phone to the dean who handed it back to the kid with the agreement that if anyone asked, he was to say that his parents had to come pick up the phone and the whole thing was just very painful for him. We had to coach him a little because he's honest to a fault and wouldn't dream of saying something that wasn't true, even if it were for good reason. In retrospect, I should have taken more note of that, but... A wink and a nod, and justice was done.

The very next day in that same class, one of my challenging students decided to flout the phone rule. I took his phone and he asked (because I apparently hadn't quite said it ten thousand times) what he had to do to get it back. I couldn't have asked for a better setup for the kid from the previous day to talk all about how painful this whole experience was and how he learned a valuable lesson. So I said, "let's ask so-and-so: how did things go yesterday?" At that point, the kid from the previous day got really excited, pulled his phone out, held it high above his head and proclaimed, "I got my phone back yesterday!!"

Well that certainly backfired.

So I had to take his phone away. Again. The look of disbelief on my face was quite real as I walked across the room to take his phone, and the other kids picked up on it and started to laugh. When I collected his phone, he was pleading with me not to take it. A-ha! Now he's back in character, I thought. He's playing the role we agreed on, so let's lay it on a little bit... "So-and-so, I can't believe it! You of all people..." And so on. He appeared to be upset and the class was having a bit of a field day. At some point it became obvious that he was actually upset, rather than just playing along, so I shut the whole thing down and moved on. After class, very upset, he came up to me and said, "Mr. Cain, you just let them laugh at me, man..."

I was gutted. I felt sick to my stomach for the rest of the day. I had made a bad assumption and now this poor kid felt like the whole class was ganging up on him and the teacher just it happen. He felt betrayed.

I called his home immediately to let his parents know what had happened - that I screwed up and he might be upset about and they should talk to him about it if he wanted to do so. I also talked to him later that day, acknowledged my mistake, made my original intent clear, and also tried to get him to believe that I would never do anything intentional to belittle him or any other student. I also asked his forgiveness and told him that I would do what I could to regain his trust, knowing that might never happen. Frankly, it's disturbing even to write about it now. It was a huge, huge mistake on my part.

Lessons learned: When necessary, enforce rules mechanically and without fanfare. Never do anything (even if just acting) to indicate that you tolerate derision or belittlement in the classroom. And never assume you know what a kid is thinking.