Get Outta' My Bubble and Don't Call on Me: Conversations About Introverts in the Classroom

Yesterday's Study Skills topic was how an introvert might feel in most classrooms, but mine in particular.

I'm a pacer. I rarely stand in the front of the class, and I am constantly on the move.  Proximity certainly helps with behavior management when there are restless or inattentive students, but to some students, it feels threatening when a teacher approaches from behind or mysteriously stops near their desk for no apparent reason. Some students expressed a strong desire to be in the middle of the class rather than on the margin; they felt exposed on the front row where they might end up two feet from a  teacher who might be observing them writing or working a math problem, for instance.  That heightened self-consciousness means they aren't engaging the content to best extent.  It's classroom "fight or flight;" they are exerting all their mental energy managing their emotional state.  By the end of the school day, the introvert is often completely spent from managing his or her feelings about the possibility of interaction.

Learning to express opinions, collaborate, and make connections extemporaneously are important life skills for students. Taking time to ask questions about where their stress points are helps teachers scaffold students toward developing those skills. Often their answers will surprise us. Introverted students may seem completely happy and compliant in a classroom, meanwhile viscerally managing some very definite preferences while the teacher obliviously holds forth about the causes of World War I, factoring, genetics, or Romeo and Juliet.  Study skills students this semester have become increasingly self-aware and have offered suggestions for alternatives.  When the discussion goes two ways and students believe teachers are open to changing our process for their benefit, the entire learning community benefits.

We discussed how teachers might informally assess for understanding rather than calling on individual students to respond to specific questions.  There are excellent technology-based solutions for formative assessment if a class has 1:1 devices, but as for traditional alternatives, many students who identified as introverts even disliked "turn to your partner and come up with three examples of..." because they felt pressure that a partner might rely exclusively on their insight—another stressful issue. Across the board, introverted students did not prefer group work, often for the same reasons.

Of one thing I'm certain:  the classroom is a round hole into which the infinite variety of student shapes often do not easily fit.  Regardless of the setting or content area, we have an obligation to constantly re-evaluate our practice based on how the content might be better engaged by the humans who share our classroom.

There is always more to be learned, and I'm thankful to these study skills students for teaching me so much this semester. I'll be a better teacher next year for having listened to them, and CCS students will benefit from their "guinea pig" status going forward, as we incorporate their ideas into our new Study Skills program for all seventh graders.