• EPK
  • Blog: ideas and updates.
  • Music services.
    • Live.
    • Video.
  • Photography services.
  • EPK Spark
JEFFREY NORDSTROM

On teaching while introverted.

1/30/2016

0 Comments

 

Teaching: Not for Introverts https://t.co/61P4qm5Ddq

— Jordan Shapiro (@jordosh) January 26, 2016
When I saw the tweet above, I started thinking and tweeting aggressively; I'm going to try to transfer that energy here.

​I read both articles at The Atlantic—"Why Introverted Teachers are Burning Out" (January 25 2016) and "When Schools Overlook Introverts" (September 28 2015)—and found myself both affirmed and discouraged: affirmed because it was nice to see that other people might also see introverts' struggles with the highly social environments encouraged by 21st Century Eduucation, and discouraged because I was hoping these thoughts would continue to simmer below the surface of my daily consciousness—and disappear there.

​I understand that personality labels are merely shorthand, but I share a lot of characteristics attributable to introverts. Generally, although I can be social I need time to recharge on my own; I get overwhelmed by large, continuous, unpredictable social situations. At a recent counselling appointment, when I told my counselor that I'm an introvert, she looked at me and said, "How can you be an introvert and keep yourself going in so many social situations?" I told her that I generally like people and that I generally see the good in people, that I can coast and improvise skilfully, and that I take care of myself through the day. As far as introverts go, I'm OK at bouncing between social situations and antisocial ones.

But introversion has led me to second-guess my decision to be a teacher. It's a lot of talking all day long and the performance gets tiresome. There are plenty of days when I don't really have a chance to recharge and I fall further and further behind. By the time I get home, I'm shutting down and using avoidance and emotional withdrawal tactics with my own family. And that's not good.

In the meantime, education is heading down a path of individualization. As a participant in the education system with introverted characteristics, these are some of my concerns:
  1. Collaboration is a corporate model, but not necessarily the best for learning. Sure, corporate culture likes to claim the values of "collaboration" and "synthesis," but these systems are not always the most effective. Just because you collaborate does not mean your end result will be better, or your individual results will improve. It's hard to measure collaboration; are you assessing the student's ability to collaborate or their ability to learn the content? And as a professional teacher, does collaboration waste more time than the learning it's intended to foster? Introverts don't tend to collaborate so often; should we expect that they will? And just because the corporate world currently sees "collaboration" as a value does not mean that it's the model to emulate.
  2. Not all teachers can teach collaboratively. If you are determined to make collaboration the foremost model in the teaching system, what do you do with the teachers who are really crummy at collaborating? It's not that they don't want to teach, nor do they have bad relationships with any student or staff member--but the collaborative model of learning might simply clash with their personality so much that it's a detriment to have them try to teach it. Nothing sucks more than inauthenicity from authority figures, and you can't necessarily expect these non-collaborative teachers to be able to "fake it until they make it." I like collaborating, but I'm not certain if I can teach it.
  3. If you want to individualize to make room for introverts, the entire system needs an overhaul. This is a usual no-brainer for me. As an education system, it's simply too much to try to juggle individualization, marks-based evaluation, exams, content areas, and the like. There are just too many systems in play. And introverts, who need their space to recharge, will never be comfortable if they don't know if they're expected to break down the system or master it.
  4. Calls for increased student feedback are destructive to introverts' needs to recharge. This may seem minor, but it takes a lot of social energy for introverted teachers to write meaningful comments on all students' work. They are considering too many things in their head, too many angles by which to assess the product.
These are just a few of the concerns I have about introversion and teaching.

Every lunch break, I spend most of my time in my classroom. At the school where I teach, the school culture doesn't really expect students to skip out on their lunch to get work done, but I like to tell people that I stay in my classroom because I want to be available for students anyhow. However, after 15 minutes or so, if no students show up, I usually close my door and keep to myself. I have had many different extroverted staff members at multiple schools ask why they so rarely see me in the staff room; I tell them it's my recharging time.

But with all the demands of teaching in schools today, I can't help but feel like it's not enough--like a lonely lunch break is just not enough for me to make it through the day.

So when I see articles like these, I feel a little less alone. And perhaps I can squeeze a few more years out of this career despite my incessant introversion. But I have somewhat high hopes that the increased individualization and destruction of classroom-based models might make more room for introverts like myself. Perhaps, beneath the rubble of the archaic content-area-based system, I and fellow introverts will find a place where we can master our learning and recharge our batteries appropriately. 

Although The Atlantic maintains an excellent online archive, I made a couple PDFs of the articles for reference.
  • "Why Introverted Teachers are Burning Out"
  • "When Schools Overlook Introverts"
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Musician.
    Teacher.
    ​Photographer.

     jeffnords ONLINE:
    Bandcamp
    Facebook
    Instagram
    ​SoundCloud
    YouTube: Music+

    jeffnords PLACEHOLDERS:
    (infrequent haunts)
    Amazon | DailyMotion
    DeviantArt | Duolingo | Flickr | FVRL | Kik
    LinkedIn | MeetUp | MySpace | Pinterest |
    ​
    Playstation | Reddit | ​Snapchat
    Spotify | The Internet Archive
    ​Tinder | Tumblr | Twitter | Vimeo | VK | WattPad
    WeChat 

    Archives

    January 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    June 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Categories

    All
    Academics
    Acting
    Activism
    Adulthood
    Agency
    Albums
    Animals
    Animated Films
    Atheism
    Books
    Camping
    Canadiana
    Christian Culture
    Comics
    Community
    Community Theatre
    Concerts
    Covers
    Creativity
    Critical Thinking
    Current Events
    Daily Grind
    Demos
    Depression
    Digital Life
    Dogs
    Driving
    Education
    Effect Pedals
    Effects
    Empathy
    Energy
    Environment
    Events
    Exploring
    Family
    Feminism
    Film Photography
    Fitness
    Food
    Friendship
    Frivolous
    Gadgets
    Games
    Gigs
    Guitar
    Guitar Effects
    Hexanon
    Hockey
    Home
    Ideas
    Ideology
    Influence
    Jam Session
    Langauge
    Leadership
    Lectures
    Lenses
    Links
    Literature
    Live Action Films
    Live Music
    Long Term Planning
    Magnetic Poetry
    Mental Health
    Mobile Phone
    Money
    Music
    Musicians
    Music Videos
    Networking
    Nostalgia
    Objectification
    Once And Over Again
    Parenting
    Performance
    Photography
    Photos
    Podcasts
    Poetry
    Policy
    Politics
    Pop Culture
    Puppets
    Quirks
    Rants
    Recording
    Reflections
    Relationships
    Religion
    Reviews
    Rhodes
    Ruins
    Running
    Science
    Self Help
    Selfies
    Serendipity
    Sexuality
    Shakespeare
    Short Films
    Skeptihumanism
    Social Media
    Songwriting
    Spirituality
    Stage
    Stories
    Studio Recordings
    Subcultures
    Teaching
    Technology
    Theatre
    Travel
    University
    Updates
    Urban Life
    Video
    Visual
    Wildlife
    Workshops
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Contact Jeffrey

Photos used under Creative Commons from Brett Jordan, b r e n t
  • EPK
  • Blog: ideas and updates.
  • Music services.
    • Live.
    • Video.
  • Photography services.
  • EPK Spark