|
|
Email is a very convenient and fast method of communication. I can use it to quickly respond to parents and colleagues. However, without any face to face contact, a tone of an email conversation can be easily misinterpreted, causing the original intention of the message to come across in a way other than the sender intended. Before replying to emails, I try to take a moment, read through what I have written, to make sure my thoughts are going to clearly come across. Sometimes however, I make the decision that I should call or go directly talk to the person instead.
In one of my first years of teaching, I made the mistake of typing a quick response to a parent email. It was an afternoon, and I was attempting to get a response to the parent so I didn't forget. However, in the email I capitalized "ON" instead of just "On" and the parent got really upset. She emailed my principal, angry that I would have done that and told her that I should know that typing in all caps meant that I was yelling at her. My principal understood that that wasn't my intention, and that I had made an honest mistake, but she did tell me to be more aware of things like that in the past. Now, over 10 years later, I still think about that incident and how things that seem like a small mistake to me are a big deal to others.
|
Locked
