A repost:
When a child’s head goes down, it’s because they don’t believe in themselves. This is not always true, but if we are doing it right, if we are staying in the language and the rest of the class is getting it and everything is burning on all cylinders, then it’s most likely the kid.
At Washington University in St. Louis my freshman year in History of Western Civilization I listened to Dr. Peter Reisenburg lecture, scared to be 18 and in college, as he lectured to a roomful of 300 sheep freshman on Monday and Wednesday.
But then on Friday we split up with TA’s to discuss the week’s lectures and reading. I was petrified in those circled discussions of 8 people who were mostly as clueless as I was. I think that graduate student in charge of the circle was equally clueless, because he never talked about HOW we communicated.
It is a reason I still have a fear of expressing myself in a group. I was never encouraged to find and use my own voice at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, where all was about intellectual achievement only. There, I sat quietly. No teacher ever challenged me to do the hard internal work of finding and using my voice in a social setting, or of even interacting with them in class. It was a disaster.
So when I got to college I freaked in small group discussions. How lucky are they whose parents insist on family discussions at the dinner table, the conversation being the real meal, as per https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/10/14/lart-de-la-conversation-and-tprs/.
So it’s not always us. It’s very often our students, if their history in school is anything like some of ours was. They don’t know how to respond in a social setting, Now, if we allow the class all kinds of blurting and stuff, and the class, as a result, sucks because of the chaos we allow, then that is another thing. Then it’s on us.
(Why do we allow such blurting? What is going on? What seam of fear have the students found in us with their blurting? What would we do if someone knocked on our door at home and told us that our careers were at stake unless we fixed the blurting? Why don’t we do that?)
But if we are stopping the blurting and doing good CI and when we sense a weak class response to every question we ask and insist on good one word responses and we are going slowly enough and it’s groovin’ – then the bad communication in our classroom could be on them, a result of previous teachers and parents not teaching them civility. Poor spirits. Afraid to show up in a group like I was. It was horrible for me and it must be horrible for them.
So don’t always think it’s you next time you see a stonefaced kid in front of you and you trying to get them to respond to you. It’s only you if you aren’t delivering from your end. Today marks the beginning of another week. We can try again. It’s not the result. It’s the effort.