Find your mute button AKA stop loving the sound of your own voice!

It's been a while since my last post. Summer vacation was filled with surgery, recovery and misery and the first few weeks of the schoolyear were filled with, well, I can't quite remember, but they were definitely filled with a lot. 

And so, the first week before Autumn break is the first time I find myself not only with a topic to write about but also the time to sit down and actually write about it. As you might have noticed the title of this post is a little commanding, using an imperative form and an explanation mark just to show how serious I am about this topic. 

As a teacher I obviously do not mind talking since it is, after all, a rather large part of my job. But.. not such a large part as some people seem to think it is. And with people.. I mean other teachers. In the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of lesson visitations as part of a new task (the details of it not pertaining to the rest of this post) and boy, it is an understatement to say that I did not have the grandest of times. The reason for this is not because all my coworkers are incompetent or that all the subjects that I visited were boring (I mean it's not like I observed a math lesson which automatically equates to boredom in my mind) but mainly because my coworkers seem to be very in love with the sound of their own voice. In the twelve lesson visits I did, most teachers spent more than 30 minutes 'teaching' by droning on and on about a particular topic. Meanwhile the students slowly lost interest, as their eyes glazed over and their minds wandered to more interesting and worthwhile daydreams. 

The idea that a lesson must consist of a teacher standing in front of the class and nattering on about the topic at hand is a very very very very outdated one (did I use enough repetition there? I'm not sure). Hell, about 300 years ago Benjamin Franklin spouted his famous words on how best to get people to learn: don't tell them, don't show them, but involve them. So, the idea that learning is most efficient when something else than listening takes place is not a revolutationary one. Still, it seems that many teachers (speaking from what I've observed so far) have not taken their history lessons to heart (it may have been that they were told... in which case we have created an endless cycle of bad teaching but... I digress)  

I mean, just take a second and put yourself back into your twelve year old self and remember the endless schooldays where you spent hour upon hour listening to people who seemed to only be talking in order to hear their own voice. Remember the exhaustion, the disinterest and the loathing that this generated. How is it possible that, if you have gone through this yourself, you would choose to emulate that what you despised? Or even worse, what if you were taught in the best way possible? Through doing yourself, while your teacher provided structure or coaching. If you were taught like that.. how on earth could you revert to this despicable way of destroying children's spirit? And yes I know, there I go with the dramatics again. But I do feel there is a truth to this. Surely, it must be killing to be twelve (to eighteen!) years old and spent five days a week, 7 hours a day sitting on your ass and listening to others. Only to come home and have to focus on the endless amounts of homework. 

When I was in teacher training my teachers did not spend hours upon hours  listing all the best ways to teach. They made us do the work instead. If there was information to be learned we would have to work together to find it, if there were exercises to be created, it was us who did the creating. And when it came to learning how to be a teacher? Well they made us stand in front of class and teach. And afterwards they would provide us with feedback, made us look back on what we did and why, and made us come up with ways to do it better. My teachers were my teachers only in name. If anything they were more like coaches: they were there to guide me, to provide me with back up and to help me with figuring out how best to approach things. But they never did so just by telling me. They rarely did so just by showing me. They always did so by involving me. 

And, seven years after the fact, this is still how I approach my lessons. Even my history lessons, a topic often believed by teachers to have to be taught through the power of stories, are filled with assignments for my students. Workforms that allow them to engage with the materials and marvel at the intricacies of human history. Sure, there are some lessons where I talk for more than 20 minutes (something that I make a habit of avoiding). There are moments when, in times of stress and preparation for tests, I simply barage my students with the necessary information. But these lessons? They are always my worst. They always leave me feeling disgruntled and grumpy, because they are not lessons wherein I am teaching my students anything, except to hate the sound of my voice. 

To all the teachers out there, who recognize themselves in this, please do not despair. The internet is filled with endless options on how to diversify your lessons and make them more interactive. Tips on how to take a step back and have your students take the lead. The only thing you need to do is realize that, no matter how much you love your own voice, it is not the only tool (and far from the best one) you have to teach your students. So, find your own mute button, press it, and be the teacher you were supposed to be.