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Misunderstanding in classrooms is often treated as a problem students create rather than just simple miscommunications. This reflection explores how assumptions, communication, and moments of frustration can shape students far beyond a single classroom interaction.
"Pay Attention Better."
"Pay Attention Better."
There are sentences I've collected over the years.
Not because I wanted them, but they were handed to me anyway. They were repeated, sharpened, and returned like instructions for becoming someone I was never going to be.
Pay attention better.
Look at me when I'm speaking to you.
Stop fidgeting.
Stand still.
Stop talking back.
Individually, they sound small and almost reasonable.
Put together, they begin to feel heavier. They feel less like guidance and more like a script for how to exist correctly in a classroom.
At the time, I didn't have the language for why those moments felt so difficult. I only knew that I was constantly trying in ways other people could not see.
Trying to listen while my brain moved faster than my body could keep up.
Trying to process spoken directions before they disappeared from my mind.
Trying to sit still while every part of me felt like static.
Trying to understand the hidden rules everyone else seemed to pick up automatically.
Trying and still feeling like I was failing at being a student in ways that had nothing to do with intelligence.
That's one of the hardest things about misunderstanding in schools. Often, what teachers see is only the surface.
They see a student looking away and assume they are not listening.
They see fidgeting and assume distraction.
They see hesitation and assume lack of preparation.
They see literal interpretation and assume carelessness.
But sometimes students are not refusing to learn. Sometimes they are navigating environments that were never designed with their ways of thinking in mind.
Those are not the same thing.
"Sometimes students are not refusing to learn. Sometimes they are navigating environments that were never designed with their ways of thinking in mind."
The Hallway
The Hallway
There is one moment I still think about years later.
It was middle school and we were tasked with completing a worksheet in a Google Doc. It consisted of a list of questions we were told to "look up." That was the instruction: look up the answers.
So I did exactly that.
I typed the questions into Google one by one, carefully and literally, the way I thought I was supposed to. Eventually, I found something better than scattered answers. I found the worksheet itself.
I thought my solution was clean, complete, and efficient.
To me, I thought I was just completing the assignment, not cheating it. I thought I was just doing what was asked.
Then the teacher saw.
She didn't ask me what I was thinking or how I got there. I wasn't given any chance to explain.
She sent me into the hallway.
Then she yelled:
"Do you think teachers make all of their own assignments?"
I remember standing there completely confused. I wasn't defensive or rebellious, just confused.
I genuinely did not understand what I had done wrong because I had followed the instructions exactly as I understood them.
Looking back now, I realize how much of that moment was rooted in assumption.
The assumption that there was only one obvious interpretation of the directions.
The assumption that intent was self-evident.
The assumption that misunderstanding meant laziness, dishonesty, or lack of common sense.
But communication is a shared responsibility.
Sometimes students are not being intentionally difficult.
Sometimes they are understanding something differently.
And sometimes the gap between those two things change how a student sees themselves for years.
The Quiet That Follows
The Quiet That Follows
What stayed with me most was not even the yelling itself but what happened afterward.
I became quieter.
It wasn't because I stopped caring. I cared too much to risk getting it wrong again.
After that, participation no longer felt safe.
When you get in trouble for doing exactly what you thought you were supposed to do, you begin questioning everything. You start triple-checking instructions. You rehearse questions before asking them. You apologize before speaking. You choose silence over risk.
Over time, that silence settles into places deeper than academics.
It changes how students see themselves.
Eventually, misunderstanding stops feeling like a moment and starts feeling like an identity.
I stopped thinking: "I just misunderstood."
And started thinking: "There must be something wrong with me."
I think many students carry those invisible stories through school every day.
Students who are trying desperately to interpret expectations that were never clearly explained.
Students who have learned that asking questions can lead to embarrassment.
Students who are exhausting themselves trying to appear "focused," "organized," or "appropriate" enough to avoid correction.
Students who are not struggling because they lack intelligence, but because they are navigating systems built around narrow expectations of communication, attention, behavior, and learning.
And so often, the adults around them never realize how much energy that takes.
What Misunderstanding Teaches Students
What Misunderstanding Teaches Students
I think one of the most painful parts of misunderstanding is that students rarely experience it as a single isolated moment.
It accumulates.
A correction here.
An assumption there.
A sigh from a teacher.
A laugh from classmates.
A moment of embarrassment nobody else remembers.
Until eventually, students build identities around those moments.
They stop seeing themselves as curious or capable or intelligent. Instead, they begin seeing themselves as:
too much
too sensitive
lazy
distracting
difficult
bad at school
bad at math
Once students begin believing those stories about themselves, it becomes incredibly difficult to separate learning from shame.
I think there are many students sitting in classrooms right now quietly wondering if they are the problem.
Students who believe they are failing because they cannot force themselves into systems that were never designed with their minds in mind.
Students who have spent years confusing difference with deficiency.
And I think educators have far more power in those moments than we sometimes realize.
Because students do not just remember curriculum.
They remember who embarrassed them.
Who dismissed them.
Who assumed the worst about them.
But they also remember who paused before judging.
Who listened.
Who let confusion remain safe.
Who made them feel like they were still worthy of patience and dignity even when communication broke down.
"Students do not just remember curriculum. They remember who made confusion feel unsafe."
What I'll Never Say to a Student
What I'll Never Say to a Student
I think about that moment a lot now that I am a teacher.
Not because I believe teachers should be perfect. Teaching is deeply human work, and every educator has moments they wish they could redo. But I think schools ask students to absorb misunderstanding far more often than they ask adults to reflect on it.
A sentence spoken in frustration may stay in a student’s mind for years.
A public correction may become the reason a student stops participating altogether.
A moment of shame may quietly reshape someone’s relationship with learning.
And many of those moments are preventable.
Not through lowering expectations, but through slowing down assumptions.
Through curiosity instead of immediate judgment.
Through recognizing that confusion and defiance are not always the same thing.
Through understanding that different ways of communicating, processing, moving, or responding are not character flaws.
There are sentences I’ve decided I will never say to students.
I will never assume lack of effort when I might be looking at confusion.
I will never demand eye contact as proof of listening.
I will never treat fidgeting like defiance.
I will never assume that the “obvious” interpretation of directions is actually obvious to everyone.
And I will never turn a moment of misunderstanding into a moment of shame.
Because I know how long those moments can stay with someone.
I know how quickly silence can grow from embarrassment.
And I know how many students are carrying stories about themselves that were shaped by moments adults barely remember.
"A sentence spoken in frustration may stay in a student's mind for years."
What I Hope Students Remember Instead
What I Hope Students Remember Instead
I cannot redesign every educational system overnight.
But I can decide what kind of classroom I want to create.
I want a classroom where students feel safe asking clarifying questions.
Where misunderstanding is treated as part of learning instead of evidence of failure.
Where students do not have to hide parts of themselves in order to belong.
Where support is not something students must earn through suffering first.
Where different ways of thinking are seen as human variation rather than problems to erase.
Because long after students forget formulas, assignments, or grades, they will remember how school made them feel about themselves.
They will remember whether learning felt safe.
They will remember whether they were treated with dignity when they struggled.
They will remember whether someone believed they were still capable even in moments of confusion.
And maybe that is part of what meaningful teaching really is.
Not just delivering content.
But creating environments where students can exist as full human beings without fear that misunderstanding will make them unworthy of patience, support, or belonging.
"Where misunderstanding is treated as part of learning instead of evidence of failure."
If my words are going to stay with students, I want them to stay for a different reason.
Not because they made someone feel small.
But because they made someone feel understood.
Because they reminded someone that trying again was still safe.
Because they helped someone believe that their mind was never the thing that needed to be fixed in order to belong in mathematics—or in the classroom at all.
"Trying again should feel safe."
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