Public and Private Places: Why it’s hard to teach and how to break the concept down

As I started teaching it I realized teaching the concept of public vs. private places was not as simple as I once thought. First, I will explain the basic concepts and then I will explain some of the more nuanced rules that will need to be taught as well.

• Basic Concept 1: “Public” is any place where people are or where people could be.
• Basic Concept 2: “Private” means any place where no one is and where no one should be (I will talk more about how this concept can be taught for individuals who require help with self-care needs in a separate post). 

Once individuals are able to identify these two concepts, we will start to introduce more nuanced rules.

• Rule 1: A private place that is in a public place is still public
  • Example: A bathroom (which is usually private, if it is in your home) should be thought of as public if it is in a grocery store. This means that there are some things you cannot do in a public bathroom that you would be able to do in a private bathroom.
• Rule 2: A private place is public if other people can see in it
  • Example: If the door to your bathroom at home is open it is now public. This means, there are certain things you cannot do now that the window is open
  • Tip: You may need to specifically teach all of the ways someone could see into a private place (e.g. curtains open, window open, room with a glass door, etc).
• Rule 3: A public place that doesn’t have any people in it is still public
  • Example: An empty library is still public even if you can’t see anyone in it.

References:

My definitions of “Public” and “Private” were taken from the Elevatus Curriculum