Whilst away from the game industry, I find myself teaching English at a private school. I'm still selling my UX skills to various VR companies whenever possible. Gameheads is over for me this year, as I struggle to find my footing in games and VR again.
This Monday morning, I am on the schedule at said private school to observe a session with a teacher and student for training purposes. The student is known for some variety of behavior issues, so I am to sit in an observation room, an office room just nextdoor to the student's learning session. A laptop is placed in his room with the teacher, unbeknownst to him. He is a boy about 10 years old, with seemingly advanced spatial / visual abilities but little ability to sit still and focus.
I am given a laptop with a headset, and I am connected with a Facetime session, where I can see the student and his teacher in the room next to me via their laptop camera. I can see the back of the kid's head as he faces his teacher. His voice echoes after I hear him through the headset-- I can also hear him through the wall. He clamors on to his teacher, falls on the floor and tries to do a handstand, with oofs and grunts. His teacher somehow manages to get the session started and the boy must read a few sentences from a book. It dawns on me that they want me to observe his session because they want me to work with him, and I ponder what kind of training someone should have to work with a student like him.
Just then, the kid says he hears a noise coming from a computer, and he turns and looks at the laptop behind him. I watch him stare into the camera asking if someone is watching him, to which his teacher tells him to just focus on the reading.
I instantly feel bad. I did as I was told and was set up with the laptop and Facetime session to watch him, but I don't feel that it's moral. Isn't it at the very least, just plain rude to pretend that you're not watching someone? When you can see them but you are hiding so that they are not aware? As the session goes on, the kid turns and looks at the computer and asks if the laptop is "awake or asleep."
"Hellooo," the kid coos at the camera, and I almost feel like I should just walk around to the other room and say, "hey, you got me. I was watching you." But the teacher keeps barking at him to stop looking at the camera and just pay attention to the reading.
Now, I was placed in the observation room in order to be LESS of a distraction for the kid. He certainly isn't stupid. It becomes a glaring mystery that there is a camera that is indubitably watching him. So soon enough he'll realize there's more information being hidden from him. This is supposed to AVOID making him feel anxious. Now he's aware of a new range of possibilities that could be hidden from him. Isn't it important for him to know that everything that is said reflects the truth?
It ironically missed the mark. Even though they got through the session and I was able to observe the teaching process, it would have been better to have me just sit in, in person. The kid would stop talking to me if I stopped talking to him. As it stands, the kid spent half the session staring at the camera and wondering if he was being watched, and another 10 minutes leaping from his seat and out of the room, to go look in through the window at me, to which I just smiled and waved. He could even see my computer screen, because I had my back to the window. At the end of the session, he put his lunch box in front of the camera, and then ran around to my window again, to verify that he could see his lunch box on my computer screen.
When his session was over, we all departed from our rooms, and the kid came around and passed me. "You figured it out," I said affirmatively, to which the kid joyfully repeated, "I figured it out! The secret camera!"
I won't be a coward who knows that I got caught and refuses to acknowledge it, or the kid's findings. Denying that he was indeed being watched would be wrong. It would be gaslighting him.
Maybe the kid doesn't know the difference, but he soon will. He's growing up in a world where he is being monitored all the time. This is more of a growing trend, because if people can easily monitor with streaming cameras, they will. Knowing my co-workers, and how often they use hidden microphones and cameras in classrooms, they probably would have ignored him, not encouraging the kid to acknowledge what he knew to be true and what was true.
I would call my co-workers passive aggressive at times-- there's definitely a communication gap. They only speak to the teachers when they need to tell them where to go, what classroom they should be in. They never ask us how we feel about our jobs or the specific students at hand. It would seem that monitoring teachers and students secretly is an anti-social way of conducting business. It seems to be a parallel that they are lacking in direct communication. Why should they have to communicate directly when they could just watch what we are doing and fire us if they don't like what they see?
Still, the need to have dialogue with co-workers and subordinates is in order. Using technology to avoid communication seems like a big mistake. And as for the kid, why not foster a more direct relationship between teacher and student instead of teaching the child that people will watch you from high above, and do not owe you a more direct kind of relationship? This is exactly why I prefer direct communication-- it's more cordial and more real. It isn't fair if I can see you, but you can't see me.
This Monday morning, I am on the schedule at said private school to observe a session with a teacher and student for training purposes. The student is known for some variety of behavior issues, so I am to sit in an observation room, an office room just nextdoor to the student's learning session. A laptop is placed in his room with the teacher, unbeknownst to him. He is a boy about 10 years old, with seemingly advanced spatial / visual abilities but little ability to sit still and focus.
I am given a laptop with a headset, and I am connected with a Facetime session, where I can see the student and his teacher in the room next to me via their laptop camera. I can see the back of the kid's head as he faces his teacher. His voice echoes after I hear him through the headset-- I can also hear him through the wall. He clamors on to his teacher, falls on the floor and tries to do a handstand, with oofs and grunts. His teacher somehow manages to get the session started and the boy must read a few sentences from a book. It dawns on me that they want me to observe his session because they want me to work with him, and I ponder what kind of training someone should have to work with a student like him.
Just then, the kid says he hears a noise coming from a computer, and he turns and looks at the laptop behind him. I watch him stare into the camera asking if someone is watching him, to which his teacher tells him to just focus on the reading.
I instantly feel bad. I did as I was told and was set up with the laptop and Facetime session to watch him, but I don't feel that it's moral. Isn't it at the very least, just plain rude to pretend that you're not watching someone? When you can see them but you are hiding so that they are not aware? As the session goes on, the kid turns and looks at the computer and asks if the laptop is "awake or asleep."
"Hellooo," the kid coos at the camera, and I almost feel like I should just walk around to the other room and say, "hey, you got me. I was watching you." But the teacher keeps barking at him to stop looking at the camera and just pay attention to the reading.
Now, I was placed in the observation room in order to be LESS of a distraction for the kid. He certainly isn't stupid. It becomes a glaring mystery that there is a camera that is indubitably watching him. So soon enough he'll realize there's more information being hidden from him. This is supposed to AVOID making him feel anxious. Now he's aware of a new range of possibilities that could be hidden from him. Isn't it important for him to know that everything that is said reflects the truth?
It ironically missed the mark. Even though they got through the session and I was able to observe the teaching process, it would have been better to have me just sit in, in person. The kid would stop talking to me if I stopped talking to him. As it stands, the kid spent half the session staring at the camera and wondering if he was being watched, and another 10 minutes leaping from his seat and out of the room, to go look in through the window at me, to which I just smiled and waved. He could even see my computer screen, because I had my back to the window. At the end of the session, he put his lunch box in front of the camera, and then ran around to my window again, to verify that he could see his lunch box on my computer screen.
When his session was over, we all departed from our rooms, and the kid came around and passed me. "You figured it out," I said affirmatively, to which the kid joyfully repeated, "I figured it out! The secret camera!"
I won't be a coward who knows that I got caught and refuses to acknowledge it, or the kid's findings. Denying that he was indeed being watched would be wrong. It would be gaslighting him.
Maybe the kid doesn't know the difference, but he soon will. He's growing up in a world where he is being monitored all the time. This is more of a growing trend, because if people can easily monitor with streaming cameras, they will. Knowing my co-workers, and how often they use hidden microphones and cameras in classrooms, they probably would have ignored him, not encouraging the kid to acknowledge what he knew to be true and what was true.
I would call my co-workers passive aggressive at times-- there's definitely a communication gap. They only speak to the teachers when they need to tell them where to go, what classroom they should be in. They never ask us how we feel about our jobs or the specific students at hand. It would seem that monitoring teachers and students secretly is an anti-social way of conducting business. It seems to be a parallel that they are lacking in direct communication. Why should they have to communicate directly when they could just watch what we are doing and fire us if they don't like what they see?
Still, the need to have dialogue with co-workers and subordinates is in order. Using technology to avoid communication seems like a big mistake. And as for the kid, why not foster a more direct relationship between teacher and student instead of teaching the child that people will watch you from high above, and do not owe you a more direct kind of relationship? This is exactly why I prefer direct communication-- it's more cordial and more real. It isn't fair if I can see you, but you can't see me.
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