Smart from the Start: 100 Tools for Teaching with Confidence

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program, Jamie Tom. Jamie is an English teacher in Scotland and the host of The Well Teacher Podcast. He's the author of two books, including A Quiet Education, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:30] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:33] SPEAKER_00:

Jamie, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:34] SPEAKER_01:

Hi, Justin. Thank you very much for having me. I'm really looking forward to it.

[00:38] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I'm interested in this concept of introverts and quiet people and maybe some of the structural things that we've built into our profession that tend to favor extroverts. What did you see happening in our field and in our profession that led you to write A Quiet Education?

[00:58] SPEAKER_01:

It's a great question. I think for me, first of all, it was a purely selfish process in the sense that I would define myself and anybody who knows me would define me as being very much 100% introverted. And I've taught all over the UK in lots of different schools from central London to Scotland and in leadership and teaching capacities. And what I guess frustrated me from a personal point of view was the fact that a lot of what happens in our schools, certainly in the UK, seems to be engineered towards the idea of an extroverted ideal. And, you know, this idea that lessons should be absolutely packed full of collaboration, of discussion, of ultimately noise. And I always felt that noise seemed to signify learning more than the deeper internal processes that I believe define learning.

[01:57]

So I sort of spent a year in a typically introverted fashion delving into this notion of what's it like to be quiet in education? What's it like to be a quiet pupil in classrooms? What's it like to be a quiet teacher in what is ultimately a performance-based profession? And then finally, what's it like to be a quiet leader within that environment? And how can we ensure that these people are succeeding and thriving in this quite demanding profession? So the book, as I say, is a purely selfish exploration of what is quiet in education and why do we need to?

[02:36]

now more than ever, hold on to these quiet skills in our noise-dominated society.

[02:42] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I would also define myself as a fairly introverted person, someone who gets a lot of energy from doing things on my own, from not engaging with other people. What do you say to the idea that whoever is doing the most talking is doing the most learning and the idea that the learning process is inherently constructive and collaborative and that there needs to be a very high degree of interaction and discussion among people in a school setting?

[03:12] SPEAKER_01:

it's really important for us to remember of educators that a degree of variety is important in any circumstances so what i'm not saying is that our lessons need to be a sort of ethereal silence uh and you know we're back in sort of victorian style uh didactic teacher letter i'm absolutely not advocating that but i also think and susan kane you know who's written the wonderful book quiet in america points out that up to a third of young people in a classroom will be introverted. And it's a spectrum. So there's obviously a degree of that. But a third of those students are going to be more on the quiet spectrum. And if we think about the sort of diet for a quieter student, if we talk about high school circumstance, where they're going from lesson to lesson to lesson, whereby if the default mode is dialogue and conversation and group work and collaboration, that experience is exhausting for young people.

[04:10]

And what happens is, and I spoke to a lot of young people who identified themselves as being more introverted in the research for the book. And what happens is they tend to feel really two things. First of all, like they're invisible and they don't fit in. And secondly, the anxiety levels tend to rocket because of all that sort of adrenaline, that kind of overstimulation that that child and young person will be experiencing. So what I've suggested in the book is that in any sort of teaching environment, in any classroom, we need to make space for embracing a little bit more quiet. So if there is a really active 20 minute section of a lesson, there's lots of discussion, dialogue and collaboration, then that needs to be followed by a more introspective process.

[04:58]

So a period of even just quieter one-on-one conversation, even better just silence and i think you know i agree i'm not saying we need to be in silence all the time but i also think that science needs to be made much more positive in our classrooms so it's not always about kind of a discipline thing you're now going to work in silence for the next 20 minutes we need to see silence as something massively important where children make sense of the experience they've had, which has been perhaps a little bit more collaborative and dialogue-led, if that makes sense.

[05:32] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. The call for balance seems overdue because I think we've all heard the call for a shift in the other direction that you know, learning is messy, learning is noisy, you know, the idea that kids should all be, you know, seated and quiet the entire time is one that in our generation, you know, was kind of finally overturned and we, you know, gained acceptance for, you know, kids being up out of their seats, kids talking more, kids doing more together. Do you think the pendulum has swung too far in that direction though?

[06:04] SPEAKER_01:

I guess if I could speak from a UK perspective, It's similar. So when I was trained, so I've been teaching about 11 years now, when I was trained, we used to have someone who sat with a sort of stopwatch and would time how much a teacher would talk. And they would say to you, oh, you've talked for over a minute. In the sort of deconstruction of the lesson, they say you've talked for over a minute there. You can't have that at all. And every lesson, in order for it to be an inspiring, enthusing lesson, had to have a section of collaborative activity in it.

[06:37]

And I think hopefully what's happened now is it's become a little bit more nuanced and balanced. But I still think in terms of that pendulum, we are a little bit more inclined to see collaboration, discussion and all that stuff dominating more than perhaps it's necessary. And a lot of, you know, the kind of science of learning and things about retention and holding on to knowledge over a space of time, a lot of that really complex stuff about how the young people actually learn over a prolonged period of time requires learning. quiet and requires that degree of inner processing that needs to take place. Because otherwise what we run the risk of is learning being something that's much more superficial. And I don't think we can have that in order for people to run over time.

[07:31] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and we can certainly probably all think of examples of times when we had our students talking. There was an energy in the room. Everybody is working with a partner and talking. But then as a teacher, you get around and you start to listen in to what students are talking about. And you realize that it's actually quite a bit of work to ensure that everyone is talking about what they're supposed to be talking about, not Not whatever comes to mind. So I appreciate your call for nuance and for balance on that and for variety within a lesson.

[08:00]

In terms of the makeup of the profession, you know, you and I have recognized that we're both introverts. Are we unusual in the profession? Like, is this a profession that attracts fewer introverts than perhaps others?

[08:14] SPEAKER_01:

One of the really positive things about writing the book was I'd always felt a little bit perhaps isolated. I'd always felt that as an introvert in teaching, I was masquerading and I was performing in some kind of extroverted version of myself. But actually, the more I spoke to teachers, the more I looked into it, I think teaching is a profession that is full of introverted people, which is surprising. But I think introverts, and again, I'm gloriously biased here, but I think introverted people make spectacular teachers because at their core, they have a sort of single-minded interest in something. And if I speak from a kind of secondary practitioner point of view, That means that they are enormously passionate about their subjects. And what I found is that introverted people tend to channel that passion.

[09:06]

and use it in a vehicle that they can share with young people in the sense that it's, you know, for example, my wife's the most extroverted person in the world and an economist. So she has no interest in me sort of wildly exclaiming the beauty of poetry or a novel. Whereas in a classroom setting, you've kind of got permission to reveal that introverted passion that you have. And I think that the danger with that is for more introverted teachers, there's quite a degree of emotional investment in it and it means that from the research I looked at introverted teachers are a little bit more likely to burn out and it's why it's so important that we need to have that sort of self-awareness that we are that little bit more introverted and the energy it takes to talk to young people all day means that we need to then take the steps to restore ourselves and

[10:04]

Find that balance that's so important because to sustain yourself in teaching as an extroverted profession, is a really challenging thing to do over the space of time.

[10:14] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just the interpersonal energy that it takes, the emotional energy that it takes to be engaging with people all day. And I recall because of our unique schedule in my school when I was a principal, we had some of our staff meetings before school and some of our staff meetings after school just to accommodate different people's schedules. And it's very interesting to see the difference in how people interact. before they've taught for an entire day and after they've worked with students for an entire day and certainly that preserving the energy, recovering the energy. What are some of the strategies that you recommend in the book for someone who does have to put forth that effort to interact with other people and does feel more drained by that interaction?

[10:59]

What are some strategies that educators can use and maybe even make their students aware of to do that kind of energy management?

[11:05] SPEAKER_01:

I think the important thing to say with this is that people are very very unique and what works for some people is not going to sort of work for everybody and but certainly in terms of the teachers I spoke to in terms of those conversations I had there's a number of recurring things that come up And I guess running exercise is one really positive thing to do. I mean, for me, that's one of my vehicles in the sense that when you know you're speaking all day and you're engaged in that process, using exercise as a way to find your own space that doesn't require communication verbally is one way to do it. And there's lots of other things. I think lots of people talked about kind of meditation, mindfulness. Other teachers spoke about the simplicity of actually just not feeling the sense that they have to go into a staff room at lunchtime and socialise, you know, that it's okay to want to eat lunch on your own in your classroom.

[12:01]

And I think it's just about being open with people about that. I started a fairly new school, I've just moved up to Scotland, and I said to people in my department, listen, for me, lunchtimes are a space where I just kind of switch myself off a little bit and eat my lunch and kind of and I think people respect that because it's our dispositions and with teachers we're interpersonally gifted in many different ways so saying that yeah I need a little bit of space at the lunch times at the end of the day to decompress a bit I think is a really useful way to cope with that and then the final thing that was recurring was writing you know the process of reflection through writing and journaling and diary writing that sort of thing I think Because for introverts, we've got a lot going on upstairs that floats around in our minds. And if you're anything like me, a lot of it is sort of incoherent jumbled mess.

[12:53]

So sometimes being able to just write and use that as a process of reflection without having to perform in a verbal way can be quite helpful.

[13:03] SPEAKER_00:

So Jamie, I think probably all educators have had the experience of being recognized for what they are, whether that's more of an introvert or more of an extrovert, by students and being sought out by students who have some of those same tendencies. So, you know, we see maybe quieter students gravitating toward their quieter teachers. What do you see happening with our quieter students and what can we do, you know, to kind of normalize that tendency and draw out their participation in ways that don't, you know, make them uncomfortable, put them on the spot, drain them, and yet still engage them.

[13:37] SPEAKER_01:

And that's the really, really important question, because the risk is, I guess, that you have read lots of things where it's almost like patronizing quieter students as almost kind of, you know, forcing them into contribution when they're not ready and they're not comfortable to do that. And to go back to that earlier point about kind of interpersonal skills, And any of the best teachers that I've kind of had the pleasure of observing are the ones that, first of all, just seem to have this gift of knowing and recognising every single individual that's in front of them. And I understand how idealistic that sounds and how difficult, you know, practically that process is. But actually, first of all, just knowing our students. Lots of the students, as I mentioned earlier, said they felt quieter students feel a little bit like ghosts drifting in between lessons.

[14:28]

And the mere process of using names, mentioning children's names as much as possible, because we all like that process of a name. We're all attached to it. And it just helps young people to feel a little bit more accepted in an interpersonal way. And the second thing would be, I guess, just being sensitive to how we ask questions. Mary Rowe did some fascinating research in the 70s and 80s about wait time and about leaving time before we ask questions. questions and before we expect student responses and but in any classroom you kind of walk into you see that there's sort of like rapid fire questions and what happens then is the extrovert ideal kicks in the kids put up their hands are confident putting up their hands and they contribute whereas your quieter students tend to feel a little bit more overwhelmed by that process so there's all kinds of strategies in the book um in which the young people can kind of

[15:26]

You can support the young people in the process of asking questions. I was lucky enough that Doug Lemoff contributed a case study and he wrote some fascinating stuff about how to leave that space for listening and how to draw out students in terms of answering. And one of those was just about asking young people to write something first before you get a contribution. so that everybody's had this ability to take a little bit of time to reflect, and then they're going to feel a little bit more kept confident moving forward. Or even really simple teaching techniques like a little bit of peer share, a little bit of discussion with a partner before you take answers in a whole class level. But what you're thinking about is ultimately, how can I make sure that all the young people in front of me are confident to give an answer?

[16:13]

so that everybody's kind of self-esteem is going to be boosted through our classroom practice.

[16:18] SPEAKER_00:

I love that because I think we're talking about moving students on both sides, in both directions, rather than just having kind of a Matthew effect where we call on the students who want to be called on and we leave alone the students who don't want to be called on. But if that's our approach, if we just say, well, that's fine, you don't ever have to talk in class, then those extremes tend to become more pronounced. So I love what you said about building in that reflective time, maybe having students do some writing or talk with a partner first before sharing with the whole class. You're not saying, just respect the fact that those kids wanna be quiet and never talk to them. Just leave them completely alone. So more of a process of drawing people in.

[16:58]

So as a teacher, how have you seen some of those same patterns show up in faculty meetings? Because certainly we see some of those same things play out the staff level where we have some staff members who would just love to dominate every discussion and get a word in edgewise constantly and do all of their processing and thinking out loud. So as an introverted faculty member, what has been helpful to you in participating fully and not feeling like you have to go toe to toe with the extroverts in that staff meeting setting?

[17:30] SPEAKER_01:

It's a fascinating thing, isn't it? Because those staff meetings are just a microcosm of the classroom. You know, the dispositions we have and the have such a profound influence in how we function in those environments. And from speaking to more introverted leaders and teachers, that's the thing that came up again and again and again, this almost like pronounced fear of the staff meeting, that that sort of has a real kind of anxiety inducing effect on teachers. To speak from a personal perspective, as I said, I started as a kind of senior leader in a school in London, And I used to sit in the senior management meetings and be completely and utterly mute and offer literally hardly anything that would be in terms of useful moving the conversation forward. And I think in terms of positive ways to get the most of your kind of more introverted staff members, a number of things came up.

[18:26]

I think the first would be in exactly the same microcosm of the classroom. your best leaders have an understanding of the dispositions of their team. They know the people who are going to speak the most, perhaps not the most sense, but they know the people who are going to be offering the most in the meeting. And so being sensitive and managing that. And they also will recognise those who might contribute in different ways. And two things.

[18:53]

First of all, making sure that any staff meeting has a really clear kind of agenda that's sent in advance. Because what I tend to do now is I sort of pull over an agenda in a quite geeky sort of fashion and think like, what can I say here? What could I contribute here? How might I get involved at that point in the meeting? What do I want in terms of my contribution to be? Because I think introverted teachers are very conscientious and they want to do and offer kind of really useful things because it's a strand of idealism that runs through more introverted people as well.

[19:30]

So the agenda is really important. Secondly, in terms of the way the meetings run itself, in the same way we would do as a classroom, kind of actively seeking people out. You know, if there are people who are just kind of ghosting through a meeting, asking for their opinion, because people sometimes don't like putting themselves forward. And again, in the same way, it might be, Justin, can I come to you in a couple of minutes? And we might explore that in a bit more detail. I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

[19:59]

And again, there's a balance because we have to be careful we don't patronise people. And again, it's just knowing the individual within that. But yeah, it's a really kind of anxiety-inducing thing. And then finally, I would say that A lot of the best leaders I've worked with have been more introverted people. And I know I'm very, very biased, but there's a sort of humility there. There's an interpersonal skills there.

[20:25]

There's a real understanding of how individuals work and how they work best. And I think as schools in general, we need to not let introverts hide away in their classrooms and do wonderful stuff. We need to find ways in which we can encourage them to take on leadership responsibility and Because they will shine. And sometimes they don't have the opportunity to shine. And we need to make that for them, if that makes sense.

[20:51] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm seeing the interplay between a couple of things that have come up at each level, whether we're talking about with students, among teachers, among our faculty, the interplay between thinking and writing and speaking and participating. You know, all of those things are good and necessary and need to exist now. together, right? We don't want to have a classroom that is just everybody talking the entire time. We don't want to have a classroom that's totally silent and everybody's just doing their work on paper.

[21:19]

We do want to have that balance and that interplay that connects intellectually, that connects cognitively between those different kind of modalities and ways of interacting. Let's take it back to the personal level and perhaps the leadership level. What can leaders do to identify and address potential areas of imbalance? As we start to just become more aware of this issue and maybe our tendency in schools to be biased toward the extrovert ideal, what are some things that we can do to kind of work toward some ways of bringing balance to that interplay?

[22:00] SPEAKER_01:

Oh, tricky question. I spoke to a few headteachers in sort of preparation for the book and one who was a really successful headteacher here in Britain and was sort of awarded an OBE for his services to education and he identified himself as being an introvert and what he said really really stuck with me because he said as a leader, what you need to do is surround yourself with people who are better than you, first of all, and secondly, who have a range of different skills and qualities, both interpersonally and even, you know, academically. Okay, so I guess ultimately, as leaders thinking, are we creating mirror images of ourselves on a leadership level? So are we all this kind of extrovert ideal that's running around being very very vocal or have we got within that scope that kind of maybe slightly more thoughtful slightly more reticent individual who can can kind of fulfill those qualities that we need to see in our schools because it's like the whole conversation I suppose it's about balance and for introverted teachers in a school

[23:14]

much like introverted young people, they need to be able to look up and see that there's the capacity for them to follow that path and that there's a quieter, more introspective leader doing wonderful stuff that then they can fulfil that role model of. Does that make sense? Because I think often we look up and we see, from my perspective, I tend to look up and see lots of extroverts and then think, all right, leadership isn't for me. But because schools are microcosms of society as a whole, We need to see the potential for all dispositions to flourish within that environment.

[23:50] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. That makes sense. Because I do think we as a society tend to reward speaking up, even if what you're speaking about has not really been. thought through very much. And I think one of the advantages that we have as introverts is that perhaps a higher percentage of what we do share out loud has been thought through. We're sharing less overall of our thinking.

[24:12]

We're maybe more selective about what we're putting out there. And that can be a very good thing. But yeah, I think that just that awareness and that seeking of balance and seeking to bring in people who maybe are more reticent to speak can be hugely valuable. Well, Jamie, thanks so much for joining me to talk about this. I think this is a really important issue. The book is A Quiet Education, Challenging the Extrovert Ideal in Our Schools.

[24:39]

And Jamie, if people want to listen to your podcast or learn more about your work, where are some of the best places for them to find you online?

[24:46] SPEAKER_01:

Fantastic. Thank you, Justin. I really enjoyed speaking to you. It's great to speak to a fellow introvert and herald how wonderful we are in a very biased way. My website is slowteaching.co.uk and the podcast is Well Teacher, the Well Teacher podcast and that's on kind of everywhere you can get your podcasts and it's on the website as well.

[25:07]

So thank you very much for having me.

[25:09] SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much, Jamie. Great to have you on Principal Center Radio. Thank you.

[25:13] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.