|
Dangerous Minds
). I visited
Johnson at her home in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to find out
more about her experience teaching children of all stripes.
Johnson happens to be skilled at working with very shy children—
which is no accident. One of her techniques is to share with her students
how timid she herself used to be. Her earliest school memory is of being
made to stand on a stool in kindergarten because she preferred to sit in
the corner and read books, and the teacher wanted her to “interact.”
“Many shy children are thrilled to discover that their teacher had been
as shy as they were,” she told me. “I remember one very shy girl in my
high school English class whose mother thanked me for telling her
daughter that I believed she would peak much later in life, so not to
worry that she didn’t shine in high school. She said that one comment
had changed her daughter’s entire outlook on life. Imagine—one offhand
comment made such an impact on a tender child.”
When encouraging shy children to speak, says Johnson, it helps to
make the topic so compelling that they forget their inhibitions. She
advises asking students to discuss hot-button subjects like “Boys have life
a lot easier than girls do.” Johnson, who is a frequent public speaker on
education despite a lifelong public speaking phobia, knows firsthand
how well this works. “I haven’t overcome my shyness,” she says. “It is
sitting in the corner, calling to me. But I am passionate about changing
our schools, so my passion overcomes my shyness once I get started on a
speech. If you find something that arouses your passion or provides a
welcome challenge, you forget yourself for a while. It’s like an emotional
vacation.”
But don’t risk having children make a speech to the class unless you’ve
provided them with the tools to know with reasonable confidence that it
will go well. Have kids practice with a partner and in small groups, and
if they’re still too terrified, don’t force it. Experts believe that negative
public speaking experiences in childhood can leave children with a
lifelong terror of the podium.
So, what kind of school environment would work best for the Mayas of
the world? First, some thoughts for teachers:
Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured. If
an introverted child needs help with social skills, teach her or
recommend training outside class, just as you’d do for a student who
needs extra attention in math or reading. But celebrate these kids
for who they are. “The typical comment on many children’s report
cards is, ‘I wish Molly would talk more in class,’ ” Pat Adams, the
former head of the Emerson School for gifted students in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, told me. “But here we have an understanding that many
kids are introspective. We try to bring them out, but we don’t make
it a big deal. We think about introverted kids as having a different
learning style.”
Studies show that one third to one half of us are introverts. This
means that you have more introverted kids in your class than you
think. Even at a young age, some introverts become adept at acting
like extroverts, making it tough to spot them. Balance teaching
methods to serve all the kids in your class. Extroverts tend to like
movement, stimulation, collaborative work. Introverts prefer
lectures, downtime, and independent projects. Mix it up fairly.
Introverts often have one or two deep interests that are not
necessarily shared by their peers. Sometimes they’re made to feel
freaky for the force of these passions, when in fact studies show that
this sort of intensity is a prerequisite to talent development. Praise
these kids for their interests, encourage them, and help them find
like-minded friends, if not in the classroom, then outside it.
Some collaborative work is fine for introverts, even beneficial. But it
should take place in small groups—pairs or threesomes—and be
carefully structured so that each child knows her role. Roger
Johnson, co-director of the Cooperative Learning Center at the
University of Minnesota, says that shy or introverted kids benefit
especially from well-managed small-group work because “they are
usually very comfortable talking with one or two of their classmates
to answer a question or complete a task, but would never think of
raising their hand and addressing the whole class. It is very
important that these students get a chance to translate their
thoughts into language.” Imagine how different Maya’s experience
would have been if her group had been smaller and someone had
taken the time to say, “Samantha, you’re in charge of keeping the
discussion on track. Maya, your job is to take notes and read them
back to the group.”
On the other hand, remember Anders Ericsson’s research on
Deliberate Practice from
chapter 3
. In many fields, it’s impossible to
gain mastery without knowing how to work on one’s own. Have
your extroverted students take a page from their introverted peers’
playbooks. Teach all kids to work independently.
Don’t seat quiet kids in “high-interaction” areas of the classroom,
says communications professor James McCroskey. They won’t talk
more in those areas; they’ll feel more threatened and will have
trouble concentrating. Make it easy for introverted kids to
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
