Enter a classroom of loud student voices and you are likely to find a teacher demanding silence. The method can vary; I have seen teachers write on boards, yell, drop books, pound desks, or stand quietly until the class follows.
However it is achieved, student silence is not student attention. If as a teacher you insist on student silence – and you would be in the minority if you did not – and you get it, take some moments to examine what you actually have. Student silence is usually passive compliance and nothing like engaged listening or captured attention.
Attention itself is a shifting quality, like water, and even the most focused of us drift. We can hardly expect our students to attend to our every word, nor to attend perfectly. So what can we expect? Very little. We can only expect what we teach and inspire.
In Ten Mistakes Teachers Make I write: “…teaching your students to listen deeply is one of your most important lessons, and there is no better way than to show them.”
If you want your students to be genuinely and deeply attentive you must show them how. Demonstrating listening means someone other than you is talking. What should they talk about? Just as having a response in mind changes the quality and effectiveness of your listening, telling someone what to say and then remaining quiet is not particularly good listening.
My offered practice: devote five minutes of your teaching session to listening to your students talk about the subject in as open a format as you can arrange. Practice listening to them as you would want them to listen to you.
Teach your students to speak. Show them how to listen. Demonstrate this often and well, and they will come to understand, from both sides, what listening can accomplish.
Great post Asher!
yup
You mention being focused in this post. Could you speak more about the types of focus we might use or teach our students? For example a lasered focus vs an open or diffused one.
In this post I talk about our focus drifting as we pay attention, which I imply is both common and acceptable. An intense focus can be good for learning, but it can also tangle and slow it. I once observed a teacher require great focus of his class when listening to a particular piece of music, over and over. He then asked if anyone’s attention had drifted. When no one spoke, he said gently that his attention had certainly drifted. The implicit permission he gave his students to allow their attention to wander also allowed them to bring it back, perhaps in another way. Intense and diffuse are still too simple; think instead about drawing as many parts or facets of the student awareness toward and around the material as possible. Sometimes the distracted, wandering mind is the one that most needs to learn the material.
I like what you said about the distracted, wandering mind. It makes me think of how sometimes things I’ve been trying to figure out will emerge from the fog when I’ve stopped paying attention to them.
Such a meaningful post. Thanks for this blog.
My primary practice is one of re-centering to a still place in my belly/hara and then noticing the space around me at the edge of my energy bodies/aura. This helps with listening a lot. If I am able to listen, students are also better able to listen. When I tense up, and am no longer dropped into the stillness, it affects the discourse. I teach this – what I call “center and circumference” over and over and over. We all return to it together, whenever things have gotten scattered or intense. With longer term students, I add a third point to it, to help with developing both focus and attention. Attention is open, and in the energy body around me. The third point is in front of me – the task at hand. Can I maintain awareness of the still place, the attention around me, and the point in front? When able to do this, it generates a lot of energy, along with more attention.
I also remind myself of this quote:
“My students think I don’t lose my center. That is not so; I simply recognize it sooner, and get back faster.” – Morihei Ueshiba
The teacher and students need reminders to recenter. We all help each other in this way.
Thorn, thank you for the comment and for the practice. These three steps echo many practices across many disciplines: inner mindful stillness, awareness of the surrounding space, and engaging with the world while keeping these awarenesses. It is an excellent practice. When the teacher can show this, can willingly reveal themselves both losing and regaining such a centered place, it is a powerful demonstration that this is a cycle that repeats, not an object to acquire. Thank you again.