I am an extrovert. Anyone who has ever met me would agree. I'm loud, and I talk all the time. While neither of those is the definition of extrovert, they are certainly signs. I don't like small talk and schmoozing at our annual meet and greet, so I must be on the mild end of extroversion; but if I spend more than one day at home alone, I get a little stir crazy. Last year, we had 3 snow days following a four-day weekend, and I was about to lose my mind before we got back to school.
As a teacher, I have a blend of personality types in my classes - extroverts and introverts, verbal processors and artistic processors, kids with autism and kids who are social butterflies. Those that are not like me are harder for me to understand, but I must still give them what they need. It is not loving to care well only for those who are like yourself, so I must learn to care for my introverts. Some of my favorite students have been introverts, once I figured out a way to get to know them without talking.
If you are like me and are looking for a resource to help you understand your introverts, I recommend the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. If that's too much reading for you, let me recommend her TED Talk. A self-professed introvert, she will give you a glimpse contributions that introverts have made in our world and let you see that they are busy mentally while the extroverts are busy verbally.
As I listened to her talk the first time, it occurred to me that this is one of my pendulum swings in education. Education is always trying to address the needs of some group that has been marginalized when the pendulum was swinging the other way. For decades, we treated school as a quiet place where students only listened and rarely spoke. If a teacher assigned a group project, that teacher was considered extreme. This left the extroverts feeling anxious. As the educational system started analyzing who they weren't serving well, they made radical changes. Now, it is odd for students to have a solo assignment. Collaboration is the default position. Desks are in pods to facilitate collaboration, and students are expected to communicate for much of their day. While this is great for the extroverts, it has left the introverts feeling anxious.
Neither of these models is the right way. Neither of them is really wrong, either, except that they both address the needs of only one type of student. We know that we have many types of students in our classrooms, and while we cannot give them perfectly what they each need every minute of every day, we can address each of their needs within the week or day or class period, depending on how our schools are structured.
I recently heard a speech by Cynthia Tobias, and she gave some great practical advice. Each day, she said, give your students
- an opportunity to talk.
- an opportunity to visualize something.
- an opportunity to move.
On behalf of my sweet introverts, I would add one thing to that list. Give them an opportunity to spend a few moments in quiet thought. You can actually incorporate all of these into one activity. You can give them a question that requires visualization and say, "We will spend 1 minute thinking about this. Paint the picture in your own mind without talking. Then, get up and walk to your partner (who would, in this situation, not be the person next to them) and spend one minute telling them what you were thinking. They will spend one minute sharing with you. Then come back to your seat." This gives the introverts, the extroverts, and the movers what they need in three minutes. You might not be able to do that every day, but you could probably find a way to work it in once a week.
Using technology will also involve introverts in a way a class discussion might not. My school as a learning management system that gives us the option to have discussion boards. I have found these to be a powerful tool for my introverts. If we have an in-class debate, there are a handful of students that will lead that discussion. I have always required that everyone must contribute at least one substantive comment, but I had to drag it out of some students. After we adopted the learning management system, I added something to our debates. I created a discussion board. I didn't have the introverts in mind when I did this; it was really just to keep the discussion going. What I found, however, was that those who had said nothing out loud in class contributed very strong opinions on the discussion board. They were more articulate and contributed far more than what I tried to pull from them while they were uncomfortable.
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