Without fail, every time I tell a handful of people that I want to study TESOL/TEFL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages/Teaching English as a Foreign Language) the general assumptions in the group are that I want to teach kids and I want to teach abroad. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I want to teach adults here in the United States. It's actually quite frustrating when people ask me about my plans for the future, I tell them what I want to study, and they say, "What grade-level do you want to teach?" or, "Which part of the world are you looking to teach in?" Or even when I tell people that I taught in Guatemala and they ask me what the kids were like. I hated teaching the kids. I liked teaching the university professors, the architects and the doctors, to name a few.
I recently had a conversation with someone where I told them I wanted to teach TEFL here and they asked, "How can English be taught as a foreign language in the United States? A lot of people go to teach English in other countries around the world, have you ever thought about doing that?" After I explained my reasons for wanting to teach here (the people who come here without English need it the most to survive, whereas people in other countries can at least communicate in the local language), this person went on to tell me about how people in other countries need English too. I get that, I do. But I digress. Back to assumptions that people make.
The same thing happened to me when I was about to start at UW for my undergrad studies: the majority of the times I told someone I was going to study linguistics, they assumed that I wanted to become a Bible translator. I really hate it when people make assumptions about me like that. Seeing all this happening to myself (again!), I started to wonder: what kinds of assumptions do I make about other people that are totally wrong and probably really annoying to them?
Really. I can't be the only one who has things assumed about them and I'm sure I'm not completely innocent of the offense either. So, how can I be more aware of the times I make wrong assumptions and how can I change that? I mean, I like to think that when people make false assumptions, such as the ones listed above, about me that I'm pretty good about playing it off and not showing that I'm thoroughly annoyed by most of the words that just came out of their mouths (also, that's an exaggeration, so if you're one of the people who said something like that to me, I wasn't actually that annoyed). So, if other people don't know that their assumptions bother me, how can I know when my assumptions bother others? I'm already not that great at reading people, so that's something I've been trying to work on in general, but seeing as how this, in particular, is something that's incredibly bothersome to me, I'm assuming (ha!) that it's a big deal to others too. [Crazy thing I've been discovering lately: I'm not actually so different from other people as I would like to think]
I will still be really annoyed by peoples' assumptions about me (especially when they assume I'll do something for them without even informing me of their assumption, let alone asking me to do it...but I digress...again), but I think that trying to put myself in the mindset of "I do it too" will be helpful to me. If nothing else, it will provide me with just a tiny bit more grace for all those assumers out there.
