Ask Mary Jo What is casual contact? Q.I don’t understand what
casual contact is. In school, my health teacher said that AIDS
isn’t spread by casual contact, but nobody explained what that
is. – 13-year-old male Mary Jo’s response: An outstanding
question that reminds me to never assume someone knows what I’m
teaching. I use this poem, “Knots,” by R.D. Laing when I do
professional trainings. It keeps me focused on the need to
articulate the obvious when teaching – which simply means that a
teacher needs to share information clearly: There is something I
don’t know that I am supposed to know. I don’t know what it is
that I don’t know and yet am supposed to know, and I feel I look
stupid if I seem both not to know it and not know what it is I
don’t know. Therefore I pretend I know it. This is nerve-racking
since I don’t know what I must pretend to know. Therefore I
pretend to know everything. I feel you know what I am supposed
to know but you can’t tell me what it is because you don’t know
that I don’t know it.