Experience = Perspective

In the course of getting my education degree, I took exactly one class in educating kids with special needs.  I hope teacher preparation programs are now requiring more than one because it is a large part of the job.  If I was only going to have one, though, I had the best.  For the life of me, I cannot remember the professor's name, but she was fantastic.  She did therapy work with horses, told us stories of kids who came to school with feeding tubes, and introduced me to the F.A.T. city workshop, which make be the best thing ever for understanding kids with ADHD. 

And, oh yeah, she only had one arm.  This is going to sound strange, but I think about her every time I use a gas station restroom.  She once told us a story about a bathroom door lock that required pulling a lever with one hand while turning the doorknob with the other.  If she had not had a traveling companion and been able to slide the key under the door, she would have been trapped.  The person who designed this lock obviously did not have the perspective that there might be people without two functioning hands, and there is no chance I would ever think about it if it had not been for this professor.  Not having her experiences would not give us the perspective needed to think about appropriate lock design.

I was scrolling through Twitter this weekend, and this story came to mind as I watched the reaction to the President's tweets about West Baltimore.  President Trump tweets while sitting in the White House, which is a downgrade from his pre-inaugural lifestyle.  How can this man who has spent his life sitting at a gold-leafed table in the two-story penthouse of the building bearing his family name understand what it means to love a hometown that has poverty and rats in addition their other culture?  When Victor Blackwell got emotional on the air, there were people who thought he was overreacting.  My guess is that they think that because no one has said that "no human being would ever want to live" in the place they love and call home.  His level of emotion reflects his experience and perspective. 

We teach students who are going to say things we don't understand.  Some of them will be wrong or legitimately strange, but some can only be understood in relation to their life experiences.  When a student says they hate Christmas, it may be because they have an abusive parent.  When a student reacts badly to Columbus Day, consider whether they have Native American background and don't find manifest destiny something to celebrate.  A student who reacts badly to reading aloud may have been mortified by their mispronunciation of an unfamiliar word in an elementary school class.  A student who overreacts to a balloon popping may be having a sense memory of an experience we don't even know about.  We don't always have to give in to the preferences of every student, but we will be able to avoid a lot of pain and class disruption if we get to know them, listen to their experiences, and try to understand the perspective that gives them.