This text first appeared within the Teaching Professor on December 17, 2018. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved.
First snowflakes of the season at present. Winter is settling in out right here within the Pennsylvania countryside. It’s quiet, no birdsongs within the morning, few leaves left on the bushes to rustle, and frost muting the crunch of these on the bottom. Within the woods the place I stroll, the silence brings every part else into sharper focus.
We don’t all the time take into consideration silence positively. Guests typically inform us it’s too quiet out right here. They really feel anxious. Silence might be awkward—we’ve all had these moments of not realizing what to say. It will probably additionally really feel like an affront. Ask a query at school, hear the silence, and really feel a small surge of anger. It’s a confrontation. It’s college students’ means of claiming that they don’t wish to sit at this studying desk we’ve so rigorously set. The feelings inspire us to behave. We transfer in, power a response that then disappoints.
Silence does have all these detrimental meanings however in programs it might probably additionally present the house wanted to course of the query, to seek for the reply, to ponder attainable responses, to consider the query that comes earlier than the one which’s been requested. And there are different constructive meanings to silence as properly. Typically there aren’t any phrases; the very best response is reverential silence. “Underneath sure situations, silence could be probably the most acceptable response, as a result of it’s only in silence that any attainable that means might be discovered.” (p. 197) We stand in silent awe earlier than a sundown, a masterpiece, or a selfless sacrifice.
I want silence to suppose, to focus, to pay attention. For a few of us that might not be the absence of noise however a sort inner quiet just like the woods right here in winter, that settling sense that comes when issues are as they need to be. The house has been cleared and now considering can happen. Parker Palmer describes “the important position silence has all the time performed within the lifetime of the thoughts. Think about Charles Darwin observing his finches or Jane Austen dealing with a clean web page or Karl Marx at his hushed desk within the British Museum or Barbara McClintock journeying inward to think about herself as a gene.…How unhappy it’s that the academy appears to grasp so little of silence, that lecturers so typically confuse the capability to make public noise with true mental powers.” (p. 164)
However there’s something great about noise within the classroom or a web based dialogue. College students speaking, making feedback, to one another, ideally in regards to the content material. College students impatiently elevating their arms whereas I’m speaking, considering what they’ve acquired to say is extra essential, and typically it’s. One remark after one other popping up on the display screen. However to orchestrate the chaos of a classroom and make room for studying I’ve to be quiet inside. I can unfurl classroom dynamics solely once I give them my full undivided consideration.
We’d like silence to pay attention—to ourselves and to others—and that’s the silence now we have such a tough time discovering. We take heed to others, however with ideas racing as we assemble a response. We anticipate that quick pause and rapidly interject what now we have to say. We don’t have time, can’t discover a place and typically merely ignore the necessity to take heed to what that voice inside has to say. It hardly ever speaks loudly nevertheless it impacts educating dramatically.
We pause, we replicate, and within the stillness now we have an opportunity to take heed to that small voice inside.
December is a loud month however largely it’s full of excellent sounds; music we love, household conversations, kinfolk arriving, associates checking in, excited kids, meals preparations, gatherings round tables, hustling and bustling. Nevertheless it’s additionally a season that lends itself to quiet instances. One other set of programs has ended, one other yr is all however over. We pause, we replicate, and within the stillness now we have an opportunity to take heed to that small voice inside. It speaks fact about who we’re as lecturers, as members of the family, and associates. It’s the voice that honors what we’ve completed and but calls us to be extra. It makes us really feel grateful. We now have work to try this issues and makes a distinction.
My fascinated with silence has been modified by an extended and troublesome piece I’m making my means by. I’ll put the reference under though it’s not gentle vacation studying. It’s huge on understanding silence extra broadly and positively. “The Western mystics and Japanese Buddhist masters immediate us to discover ways to expertise silence, to ‘wrap our phrases round areas with out phrases and depart them wordless.’” (p. 200) That’s a effective thought for the season.
References: Zemlylas, M. and Michaelides, P. (2004). The sound of silence in pedagogy. Academic Principle, 54 (2), 193-2004.
Palmer, P. (2002). “Assembly for Studying” revisited: Trailing Quaker crumbs by the wilderness of upper schooling. M. L. Birkel, ed., The Inward Instructing: Essays to Honor Paul A. Lacey. Richmond, Indiana: The Earlham School Press.
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