matching tracksuits

We'll call him Doug. He's one of the young men I work with -- a young man who's made a lot of progress in the last few weeks. An exchange with him a few weeks ago taught me -- again -- the importance of speaking judiciously, and it suggested something of this young man's past.

We were writing up reports from a short experiment we'd done, and I thought I'd use the chance to teach the boys something about spreadsheet software. We were beginning to enter all the data into a spreadsheet, and I suggested to Doug that he add a title.

"What do I call it?" he asked, his voice a bit edgy.

With Doug, I've noticed that confusion leads quickly to frustration, and frustration can lead to crisis. When I hear the edge in his voice that suggests all is not well, I slow down, and I also mention to Doug that I've noticed he's getting frustrated, and I encourage him to keep his cool "like I know you can."

To answer his question, I suggested he think back to the topic we'd been learning about in the previous lesson (namely: friction). He couldn't remember, and he was clearly not entering a "teachable moment."

I continued trying to jar his memory, asking him some fairly basic questions that were similar to ones we'd worked on in class. One of them, I recall, was, "Well, Doug, what happens when you try to walk on ice?"

He looked at me as if I were a complete idiot. When he didn't answer, I asked him to hazard a guess.

He exploded.

Man, you know what happens when you try to walk on ice! I know what happens when you try to walk on ice! Everybody knows what happens when you walk on ice! Why are you asking me that?! What are you talking about. I just want to get some help and you go off asking me stupid questions!

His voice had gone from being merely edgy to being positively aggressive. Everything in his body language screamed, "You're an idiot!"

Since instruction in social skills trumps academics, I stepped out of my role as science teacher and explained what had just happened.

When you say those things in that tone, with that facial expression, your words are telling me one thing, but your body is saying something else. It's saying to me, "You're stupid."

It's just a small step from, "It's saying to me, 'You're stupid.'" to "You're saying to me [that] you're stupid."

Doug heard the latter; I intended the former.

Instant crisis.

"Man, don't you fucking call me stupid!" -- and several variations of that same sentiment before I could calm him down.

At first, I was completely taken aback. I had foreseen the misunderstanding and thought I'd chosen my words with sufficient care. My gut instinct was something I'm a little ashamed to admit now: "You just hear what you want to hear! You're just looking for an excuse to act out!"

Writing about it in my journal that night, I realized my error. You can't verbally indicate those quotation marks (or inverted commas, if you prefer) with perfect clarity. When I wrote the sentence, I saw how easily it could have been misconstrued.

Better would have been, "It's like you're telling me that I'm stupid."

All that aside, I can't help but wonder if there was much more going on. Most of the kids I work with come from environments that are so far from the norm -- let alone the ideal -- that it's shocking. For all I know, almost every time Doug has heard the word "stupid" coming from an adult's mouth, it was directed at him.

Once I calmed Doug down and explained what I really meant, I realized I did have a teachable moment then.

See, Doug, when you thought I called you stupid, you really didn't like it, right? And you really didn't want to be in my presence, let alone have me help you. When you let your body language accidentally tell people that they're stupid, they don't like it, and they'll be less inclined to help you. Understand?

Doug screwed up his mouth while he thought about it, then mumbled "Yeah." And though I might be imagining things, I could have sworn that for the rest of the lesson, Doug was doing his best to stay aware of his body language.

As often happens in jobs like mine, its those little moments that make all the less-than-ideal on-job experiences worthwhile.