Investigating My Assumptions

 

As an educator, I come into contact with many different families in the community that I work in. As any human being, I also assume things about the families that I come into contact with. As you read about the assumptions I have about family systems that I come into contact with, I ask you to think about where you work and think about some assumptions you have about your coworkers and the people who come into your work. Two assumptions that I have about some of those families are; 

1.  Family systems do not put much effort into their child’s school life.

My first assumption about family systems not putting much effort into their child's school life surfaced when I noticed some parents would rush through conversations about their child's school activities. According to Cooper “Involvement activities relate to parents being aware of their child’s achievement progress” (pg. 380). This means in order for a parent to be considered an involved parent, they should be aware of their child's achievement progress and know what their child is doing in school. A deficit thinking that I noticed in my assumption, was this assumption was mainly aimed at African American families. According to Cooper “African American mothers are too often steeped in deficit-based ideologies and stereotypic images that view them as uninvolved, angry, or uncaring” (pg. 379). This means African American mothers are often faced with this deficit thinking ideology. As a result of my assumption an obstacle that I face to create family school community partnerships by my self-system form a less meaningful connection to family systems. In the reading, it states, “First meetings with parents, often the first personal connection that is made, set the tone for the subsequent relationship” (Keyes, 2002, pg.184). In order to eliminate/ decrease my assumption I can allow my self-system to be more open-minded to family-systems and child-systems behavior. Also, by pushing away the traditional way of thinking a parent should show that they care about their child’s school life and take family systems' other responsibilities into consideration. In the reading the author states, “, traditional school-based models of parent involvement rarely account for the many ways that low-income and working-class African American parents participate in their children’s education and display educational care” (Cooper, 2009, pg. 381). 

2. Many family systems do not correct bad behaviors.

My second surfaced in my self-system’s thoughts when a child does something inappropriate and laughs about it. My self-system came to have and operate in this assumption due to my interactions with many child systems that display aggressive or inappropriate behavior in school and believe it is not an appropriate behavior and believe that it is an acceptable behavior. As a result, this assumption led me to have biases on certain children. My self-system has fewer expectations for certain children’s behavior. Keyes states, “How parent and teacher come together over their common interest in that child is influenced by how they each interact with the child, and their feelings with regard to that child” (pg. 186). In order to eliminate/ decrease my assumption I can use Systems Theory to support my efforts by asking my self-system;

“How is change in one part of the system affecting change in another part of the system?” This can be relayed as, How is a family's system changing their other responsibilities going to affect the changes in the child system’s school life? By showing empathy to family systems I can then become more understanding. 

I hope you enjoyed reading about My Assumptions. 

Now I implore you to tell me about assumptions you have/had about your co-workers and the people that you come into contact with at your job. As you do this I want you to think about ways that you can move/ overcome these assumptions that you have.

Here are a few questions you can use:

1. How are systems impacted by the larger environment?

2. How does input into the system affect the output of the system?

3. What are the boundaries of the systems?

*(Replace the word system to what or who you are talking about.)