The # 1 Fear Teachers Have

"The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening..." - Anonymous

One of my first practice teaching supervisors told me once - “Don’t equate silence with the absence of learning.” That hit a sweet spot but it took me many years to become comfortable with it, put it into action and not be afraid of silence in class.

I remember being a new teacher and I was so deathly scared of any silence in the classroom! I’d yammer and stammer away just to fill that void. It was a panic attack, it was a nightmare, it was worse than death.

Now, with time, experience and a lot of training, I’ve come to see the value of silence. Come to see silence more as a friend/partner than a Freddie Kruger. I see how silence is not “nothing” but something very key and elemental to the learning process. Something necessary and valuable. A teacher’s best ally.

Silence is definitely an indication of student learning and not as supposed by so many panicking, sweaty palmed teachers – a white flag of nobody home and they’ve all surrendered.

Especially with language, wait time by the teacher fosters learning and gives students whose brains are overloaded and processing so much with so little power (access to LAD and all that), a chance to digest and turn on the ability to communicate. Silence builds purposeful intent and allows communal attentiveness.

And actually, silence is essential to all speech, to all communication! Language isn’t just composed of sound but of much silence. There is silence so everything isn’t said at once, proposed one smart comedian.

When I think of all the truly great teachers I’ve met in the classroom, either as a trainer or as a student – I got to say, they all had tamed their fear of silence. They’d wait. They get great learning and understanding from their students. They’d truly come to appreciate thought over noise. They were slow and purposeful and allowed silence to be a warm blanket in their classroom.

But it is so difficult, to shut up and be silent! I still have trouble and what prompts this post was a recent class where I found myself posing great questions but not waiting long enough as the students thought. Finally realizing how frightened I was by the silence and forcing myself to count a full and slow 5 seconds before continuing.

Train yourself, force yourself to be quiet. Count to 5 or even 10 between bouts of speech. I guarantee you, your classroom will become a place of greater learning. Thought entails and needs silence. It truly does. So let’s not be afraid of it!