Lecture or Conversation?

On Friday, at my college, I attended a wonderful Flex (professional development) activity, by Dr. Jaiya John, poet and foster youth advocate. His "talk," if such an inspired performative expression of ideas can be called "a talk," got me thinking about my introvert's crusade to combat the almost universal maligning of "lecture" that pervades pedagogical circles.

Just as I struggle to call Dr. John's "talk" a "talk," I certainly wouldn't call it a "lecture," at the risk of making it misunderstood. Any educator who hears "lecture" nowadays hears its negative connotation as well.

In a nutshell, Dr. John talked to us (the audience of about 40 people) for an hour and a half.

Yes, that's right. We listened quietly to another person's voice for 90 minutes.

And it was AWESOME.

Dr. John didn't do a bad lecture. He didn't drone on in a monotone or make it hard for us to see the topic's relevance to our lives and our society. He did a good lecture. He combined poetry, storytelling, explanation, gesture, eye contact, vocal variation, humor, and so much more to make us think about how to draw upon our own human vulnerability as we nurture people who have been through traumas that are hard to imagine.

And he did it for 90 minutes.

The subject was a complex one, and the talk wove personal experience, professional experience, a lifetime (so far) of reading, and more. It needed 90 minutes. At least.

But just because it was one man talking to a quiet audience for 90 minutes doesn't mean it excluded our participation. In addition to all the thinking I did while listening as well as the eye contact and nodding and other subtle audience participation, there would be a workshop to follow when we could talk to Professor John. He let us know that we could contact him anytime, and I plan to write him an e-mail soon with some of my responses.

When Professor John began his talk, he described instances when his students played the saxophone or sang for his social psychology class. My first reaction was, "Here we go again. Here's another person who's going to tell me to let the students lead the class."

But then he himself talked to us for 90 minutes.

And I realized that a class is a type of conversation. It's not always teacher-led, but it's not always student-led, either. Students shared their talents and stories, but Dr. John shared his as well. A classroom is a place to exchange ideas, not a place where students or where professors, whose voices provide a valuable perspective the perspective of how our discipline illuminates the world, are silenced. A classroom values everyone's voice. When I lecture or give direct instruction, or when I ask my students to read ("lecture" is reading, or the gathering--as indicated by the fascinating etymology of the word-- and dissemination of ideas, which can be done aloud or in print), I am asking them to spend a lot of quiet time taking in someone else's ideas. But what makes this okay is that I want to read my students' long and thoughtful responses when they write their essays, when they give their presentations. I would never malign Dr. John as a "sage on the stage." He brings sagacity to the classroom and should share it; so do and so should our students.

Long and thoughtful presentation of ideas, written or spoken, plus long and thoughtful response: this is scholarly conversation. And it takes time. Sometimes 90 minutes or much, much more for just one person's part of the dialogue! Scholarly conversation takes time. So much of the active and cooperative learning educational methods touted today are based on a different type of conversation: casual conversation. The 10-minute small-group discussion in which there's a rapid-fire exchange of ideas is a type of conversation, but not the only type. In fact, in my classroom, I sometimes want to get away from the paradigm of casual conversation. In our world of random and rapid sensory assault from all sides, it is especially important to introduce students to that other type of conversation, the scholarly conversation, the one that requires time and concentration, the one that they don't see happening everywhere (or perhaps anywhere) else.

Babies: The Antidote for the Introvert's Dread of Small-Talk

I recently read the posting "Moms are People, Too," by Stephanie Giese, on one of my favorite blogs, Binkies and Briefcases. It's about how, when you become a mother, strangers approach your toddler/young child and talk to him/her ("Oh, you're so cute! You love your blankie, don't you?") while ignoring the mother. The post was about how to get people to stop doing that.

In principle, I totally agree. (I have even seen my own mom blow right past me and grab my daughter without so much as a "Hi, Diane"--not that I blame her; Baby V. is a lot more snuggly than I am.)

But, then, I realized that part of me--the introverted part--doesn't want people to stop doing that!

However, as Susan Cain and many others have noted, small-talk is very awkward for introverts. We don't like casually bouncing from topic to topic, thinking of entertaining witticisms on the fly. We like to reflect and have more intimate one-on-one conversations about topics that we feel passionate about.

So, you can imagine how happy I was to realize that, after I had my baby, I'd never have to struggle to make small talk again! Oh, okay, maybe not "never," but I at least have a few years of rapid-fire baby/toddler milestones to regularly report to others before she becomes another run-of-the-mill kid who can do critical things unassisted, like go to the bathroom and eat food with a fork.

Here are some great examples of the sort of small talk I can now make now that I have a baby.

To the neighbor: "She is trying really hard to crawl, but she can't just yet!"

To Grandma: "She tried bananas this week!"

To colleagues: "I've had to run out and buy twelve-month pajamas already!"

To strange lady in grocery (or any) store: "She's eight months old and is getting her top two front teeth!"

To everyone: "I'm so tired!"

For the first time in my life, I know just what to say and how to say it in a quick and casual conversation.

So, Friends and Strangers who talk to Baby V. and not me, I say to you, I am not offended! I don't want you to stop! Talk to my baby and I will happily answer you with what I think she would say. I'll use the adult-pretending-to-be-a-baby voice and everything!

Is it sad that I'd rather invent hypothetical baby's-point-of-view small talk than make my own?

I suppose you could be cynical and say I'm using my child to avoid an activity I dislike. But I say it's just an unexpected perk after things like, you know, labor and sleepless nights and all that stuff, that my bundle of joy is also the ultimate conversation piece--er, person. ;)

My College's New President: Out as an Introvert!

Recently, we received an e-mail of introduction from the newly hired college president. He described his family, his hobbies, his career, and his goals for the college, as one might expect. After he mentioned that upon his arrival he would meet with employees, students, and community partners, he added, "All of these social commitments tax my introverted personality, but I believe they are necessary to doing my job well." My first reaction was, "Woohoo! Go, introverts!" After all, it's reassuring to have someone with your personality type in a position of influence, in a someone's-looking-out-for-us kind of way. And I like to feel that I can in some way relate to an important new stranger I'll be meeting soon. 

Then, I worried. Hm, now do we have to mention introversion in a sort of disclaimer? Like, "Hey, I might not be as charismatic as you might expect, but I'll get the job done!" Must we introverts forever be assuring people that we'll be OK in spite of our personalities, rather than because of them?

But then I looked at the positive. He mentioned introversion! In a memo that was sent to every employee at the college. Which means he wasn't afraid that he'd be looked down upon after coming "out" as an "in-." Maybe the fact that the new college president felt free to mention his introversion is a sign that our society is moving toward more acceptance of introverts. The fact that the new president admitted to being an introvert shows that he doesn't feel pressure to hide his true self and pretend to be an extrovert, which is what lots of introverts habitually do to survive, especially in people-person fields like education. I know I do!

So, overall, I think the declaration of introversion in my new president's e-mail was an indication that things are moving in the right direction for introverts. Even though people need a warning that we're coming, at least we won't have to hide once we get there!

An Introvert's Response to the 30 Million-Word Word Gap

So, everyone is reading about it. The articles are all over the likes of Atlantic Monthly and NPR. Another study has found that children of low socioeconomic status hear 30 million fewer words than children of higher socioeconomic status. Of course, the point of publicizing this information is to encourage parents who might not otherwise do so to talk to their babies and toddlers. Most of these parents would have a very different educational background than yours truly, a college English professor. But, if you're a guilt-ridden neurotic like I am, your response to all the word gap articles that came out this week was to say to yourself, "Holy crap, I've got to talk to my child more!"

Basically, I'm hoping that this buzz about the word gap doesn't turn into middle-class people pressuring themselves (or their fellow parents) EVEN MORE into embracing the notion that children need to be stimulated every minute or they will be losing out on something. Or that a parent's (or, by extension, teacher's) job to respond to a child's every sentiment or satisfy his or her every curiosity.

On yesterday's walk, I was tormented. Would my introversion disadvantage my child? Were the days of quietly snuggling my infant gone? Must I change to become a proper vocabulary-building, choice-offering mother? Was I asking the baby enough questions? Furthering the conversation enough with my 6 month-old in her carriage? I exhausted myself with "What do you see? Is that a tree? What color is the tree. The tree is green! What else is green?" Gah. If walks were always going to be like this, I didn't want to go on any more of them.

Today, we walked quietly. What introvert wouldn't want to teach her child the pleasure of a quiet walk? I observed that my daughter looked all around and that, since I already talk a lot to her, it's ok for her to just look around sometimes. If I don't distract her, she has to think about what she sees. As she gets older, I will teach her that being quiet doesn't mean you're doing nothing. I hope other parents and educators realize that quiet does not always signal a lack of something. There are positive ways of being quiet. Being quiet can mean taking time to be observant and reflective. This doesn't mean to ignore your kids and hope they become contemplative little Buddhas. It means to teach them the good ways of being quiet. We can instill habits of self-reflection. Some inner-city schools have even had great success with teaching kids to meditate.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I hope these 30 million-word word gap findings are not interpreted in such a way that contributes to the current atmosphere in education and parenting that learning can't happen without talking, without noise. Believe me, as a community college English teacher, I want kids to come to school with great verbal skills so, parents, talk away. But as our babies grow up, let's not forget to show them that words can also have rich lives in our heads and on the page.

"I like your hidden red."

So, I'm a total sucker for recent years' hair color miracle called ombre, in which highlights of color are added to layers underneath rather than on the top of the hair. No roots show, ever! With the baby almost 12 weeks old, I decided to get some pampering and go to the salon for the first time since I had had her. I got some ombre streaks in my favorite color, a dark red. When I curl my mostly dark, dark brown hair, the red provides subtle, shimmery swirls of color.

A few days later as I pushed my cart down the aisle in the grocery store, a woman, after admonishing her kid to "get out of the lady's way," took a closer look at me and my brand-new ombre and said, "Oh, I like your hidden red!"

Thank you, Person in the Grocery Store, for unwittingly creating my favorite new metaphor for introversion! We may be quiet or even dark, but we all have our "hidden red."

Baby Introverts?

Since my baby was born, I've been reading baby books of course, and The Wonder Weeks (van de Rijt and Plooij, 2013) had this to say in their chapter on week 12 of infant development: "Some babies are very aware of the world around them, and they prefer looking, listening, and experiencing sensations to being physically active themselves" (96). Hm, sounds like baby HSPs (Highly Sensitive Persons, to use Elaine Aaron's term) to me! But the bias is present against even baby introverts: "Most of the time, professionals, as well as friends and family, assess a baby's development by looking at the physical milestones, such as grasping, rolling over, crawling, sitting, standing, and walking. This can give a one-sided view of progress as it makes the 'watch-listen-feel' baby seem slower" (97).

En Masse at Mass

It occurred to me one Sunday at church that the current educational establishment would think of the format traditional Sunday services as such a waste: all these people gathered together and not interacting! They're all sitting together quietly, perhaps "alone together," as Sherry Turkle might say.

I think this sort of thought comes from our modern world of isolation. We live in densely populated cities, but we don't know our neighbors. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said we were all suffering from "piblokto madness," isolatedly fighting our own demons in tiny cubic dwellings. When you look at it that way, it seems like, oh, my, all these people nearby and yet such loneliness! The irony! The tragedy! The same seems to be the opinion when you have forty students in a room and they are not talking to each other but rather are quietly reading or, worse, listening to a teacher, a "sage on the stage," one of the world's most gag-worthy educationalese put-downs for the teaching style in which the student is not the center of attention.

But for most of human history, everyone was clumped together by virtue of necessity. Tribes pitched their tents close and people huddled together for warmth. People were ALWAYS together. When church services and much later public schooling started, I would imagine that there were so few educated leaders available that people had to attend en masse; there were not enough priests or teachers to go around. In other words, people attended in large groups because they had to, not because this was the best way to do things or because the goal was collaboration. The goals included reflection, introspection, thoughtfulness--all things done better alone or in pairs or very small groups. For most of history, the wealthy had private tutors and there were no giant classrooms full of kids. Of course, this was due to elitism, but I think also because it doesn't work; those with no financial limitations chose to do education one-on-one or one-teacher-per-family. With the diversity of our student populations now, one of my ed school professors said that maybe (in a perfect world with no economic constraints) the way for education to really differentiate instruction and address everyone's needs would be to have educators work with students on an individual or small group basis, the way lawyers work with their clients.

All this is to say that the panic that ensues when we see a large space with tens or hundreds of people being quiet and not interacting with each other is uncalled for. Just because there's  no talking or collaborating doesn't mean there should be or that nothing meaningful is going on.