Professional Learning for Busy Educators

Who are you hearing from in your class? As a sixth-grade teacher, I used to encourage my students who didn’t speak up in read-aloud discussions, morning meetings, or whole class lessons. I would write comments of encouragement and cheer moments of participation. And when it came to pondering how they did on certain standards, such as “participates in class discussions about literature,” I had plenty of data to support my scores.

But was I really giving the introverted students a chance to show what they knew and could do if I only considered whole class participation data?

We know students learn in different ways and are working to develop in their zone of proximal development. Teachers regularly differentiate and personalize learning for students’ dispositions, abilities, interests, backgrounds, and personality types. But it has taken the education community quite a long time to consider introverts.

The good news is, there are practices, assessments, and procedures that support introverts in an often extroverted world.

Being quiet, it seems, is regarded as a deficit that needs to be pointed out and fixed. Throughout the years, few teachers bothered asking why he was so quiet and hesitant to share his thoughts. It wasn’t until my son’s fourth-grade year when a teacher helped him come out of his shell. What made this teacher special? He took the time to talk with my son and get to know him personally, despite the fact he was quiet. He made an effort to find ways for him to contribute without being the center of attention.

Now, my son is going into eighth grade now and while he’s still my shy guy, he may actually raise his hand a few times a year without prompting. Progress!

So why am I sharing this personal story? It has something to do with you, fellow teacher. Soon another school year will begin and a new batch of students will sit before you. The grade level or content you teach doesn’t matter, you will have them sitting in your room: the quiet kids. They don’t cause trouble and for the most part they earn good grades. But these are the kids that tend to fade into the background and slip through the cracks. The ones who are so often overlooked.

When Lily Shum was little, she dreaded speaking up in class. It wasn't because she didn't have anything interesting to say, or because she wasn't paying attention or didn't know the answer. She was just quiet.

"Every single report card that I ever had says, 'Lily needs to talk more. She is too quiet,' " recalls Shum, now an assistant director at Trevor Day School in Manhattan.

She doesn't want her students to feel the pressure to speak up that she felt.

That's why she's joined more than 60 educators in New York City recently at the Quiet Summer Institute. The professional development workshop was based on Susan Cain's bestseller Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking.