This text first appeared in The Instructing Professor on December 17, 2018 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. Attempt a FREE three-week trial of The Instructing Professor!
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 timber to rustle, and frost muting the crunch of these on the bottom. Within the woods the place I stroll, the silence brings every little thing else into sharper focus.
We don’t at all times take into consideration silence positively. Guests generally inform us it’s too quiet out right here. They really feel anxious. Silence will be awkward—we’ve all that these moments of not understanding what to say. It could additionally really feel like an affront. Ask a query in school, hear the silence, and really feel a small surge of anger. It’s a confrontation. It’s college students’ manner of claiming that they don’t need to sit at this studying desk we’ve so fastidiously set. The feelings encourage us to behave. We transfer in, drive a response that then disappoints.
Silence does have all these adverse meanings however in programs it may well additionally present the house wanted to course of the query, to seek for the reply, to ponder attainable responses, to think about the query that comes earlier than the one which’s been requested. And there are different constructive meanings to silence as effectively. Generally there are not any phrases; the most effective response is reverential silence. “Beneath sure situations, silence is perhaps essentially the most applicable response, as a result of it is just in silence that any attainable which means will be discovered.” (p. 197) We stand in silent awe earlier than a sundown, a masterpiece, or a selfless sacrifice.
I want silence to assume, to focus, to pay attention. For a few of us that might not be the absence of noise however a form 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 pondering can happen. Parker Palmer describes “the important function silence has at all times performed within the lifetime of the thoughts. Think about Charles Darwin observing his finches or Jane Austen going through 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 know so little of silence, that lecturers so usually confuse the capability to make public noise with true mental powers.” (p. 164)
However there’s something fantastic about noise within the classroom or a web based dialogue. College students speaking, making feedback, to one another, ideally concerning the content material. College students impatiently elevating their arms whereas I’m speaking, pondering what they’ve bought to say is extra essential, and generally it’s. One remark after one other popping up on the display. 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 hear—to ourselves and to others—and that’s the silence we now have such a tough time discovering. We take heed to others, however with ideas racing as we assemble a response. We watch for that brief pause and shortly interject what we now have to say. We don’t have time, can’t discover a place and generally 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 mirror, and within the stillness we now have an opportunity to take heed to the small voice inside.
December is a loud month however largely it’s full of excellent sounds; music we love, household conversations, family members arriving, pals checking in, excited kids, meals preparations, gatherings round tables, hustling and bustling. However it’s additionally a season that lends itself to quiet occasions. One other set of programs has ended, one other yr is all however over. We pause, we mirror, and within the stillness we now have an opportunity to take heed to that small voice inside. It speaks reality about who we’re as academics, as relations, and pals. It’s the voice that honors what we’ve achieved and but calls us to be extra. It makes us really feel grateful. We have now work to do this issues and makes a distinction.
My desirous about silence has been modified by a protracted and troublesome piece I’m making my manner via. I’ll put the reference beneath 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 learn to expertise silence, to ‘wrap our phrases round areas with out phrases and go away them wordless.’” (p. 200) That’s a wonderful thought for the season.
Maryellen Weimer, PhD has edited The Instructing Professor since 1987. She is a Penn State Professor Emeritus of Instructing and Studying. Along with editorship of the publication, Dr. Weimer has authored and edited eight books; most just lately Learner-Centered Instructing and Enhancing Scholarly Work on Instructing and Studying.
References
Zemlylas, M. and Michaelides, P. (2004). The sound of silence in pedagogy. Instructional Concept, 54 (2), 193-2004.
Palmer, P. (2002). “Assembly for Studying” revisited: Trailing Quaker crumbs via the wilderness of upper training. M. L. Birkel, ed., The Inward Instructing: Essays to Honor Paul A. Lacey. Richmond, Indiana: The Earlham Faculty Press.
