Discussions: Honouring Silence

I'm participating in a great Reading Circle right now on Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms by Stephen D. Brookfield & Stephen Preskill (Josey-Bass, 2nd ed. 2005) 

My discussion group humored me today and allowed me to test-run an activity with them that would invite the students to remain silent for 5 minutes before the discussion got started.  I found it a bit of a challenge to stay engaged for this length of silence in a facilitation role.  Generally I feel I am doing well if I silently count to 10 to allow enough silence to encourage others to speak. But there is something about this length of silence which held me more accountable. I couldn't just count in my head; I had to be mentally present for the activity. The five minutes gave me time to consider the question posed, allowed for some time to get distracted, and then re-think the question.

Brookfield and Preskill have some great points about silence in discussion which I think I'll try more actively to practice:

"Don't mistake students' silence for mental inertia or disengagement... Silence is the condition the media dread above all else - they even call it "dead air" - but real-life discussion is not a talk show! Effective discussion leaders take steps to ensure that periods of reflective silence became accepted as a normal and necessary element of people's deliberations." (p.65)

How can I include more reflective silence in my homeschooling?

• Pausing at meaningful times when reading aloud to silently reflect on the story and thereby invite the kids to do the same.
• Allow the kids to have some silent reflection after reading an article before we get started on projects.
• Try and pose analytical questions and then structure 5 minutes of silence in our work together. Perhaps when they are writing their weekly learning story I can get used to the idea that not typing is still attending to their work...
• Model reflective thinking when the kids ask me questions; "Interesting question. Let me think a moment..."
• Look for examples of silence in stories and movies that are powerful.

"Another mode of responding [to student comments] is through silence. The tendency to answer students without hesitation is a hard one to unlearn... We believe that even more time, up to a full minute, can occasionally be used to model unhurried deliberation and to emphasize the importance of reflection. Structuring silence can give participants a chance to take the time needed to think through a new idea, make sense of it, and fit it into an existing mental schema." (p.98)

Joyfully silent,
Caz.

Reminiscing about summer... Muffin Mouse