Talking about Talking

On Friday afternoons my classroom is used for a computer game design class. It's more of a club, really, because as far as I can tell there is little or no instruction, which seems appropriate for a Friday afternoon. The students gather by the door, ecstatic with anticipation. An adult roles a cart of laptops in and sets them up. The kids pour in, sit down at a computer, and they are off into a blissful hour of roaming around some sort of world with multiple dimensions where they magically create "lava fields," "portals," and "creatures." They are working independently the entire time.

And they are talking. All of them.

Yesterday I was most impressed by how continuous and unanimous the talking was. There were only 15 or so children in the room, ages 6 to 10, and most of them weren't speaking to anyone in particular, so the talking was not loud. There was an even, bubbling murmur in the room as each child narrated what he or she was doing ("Now I am going to make the lava field."), called out exclamations when there was some sort of milestone achieved ("I killed my dragon!"), made sound effects, or just sang. They were all completely invested in the task at hand and working away. No one got up for any reason. It was an hour of happy activity. And talking.

I spend much of my day trying to get kids to stop talking.

My students, fourth graders, love to talk. They are brimming with ideas, jokes, fears, questions, and they want to share them with someone, anyone. It is an instinct, a primal need. They speak to be heard, and they speak just to hear the sound of their own voice. They speak over each other, beside each other, despite each other. I teach many small groups a day and even when I have only three or four students in front of me they have difficulty waiting for their chance to speak. Whenever I stand off to the side for a moment to complete a task, there pops up another child, who has undoubtedly been watching carefully all morning for this rare opportunity, to tell me something. A tooth has been lost. A new dog acquired. A question raised about when the next fire drill will be.

If it were not trained out of them, I believe my students would talk all the time. True, as with anything, there is a spectrum of talkers. I have a few quiet ones who speak only when spoken to and whom I need to encourage to share their ideas. Some years are more talkative than others, and I have had classes that were relatively easy to "keep quiet," who were content to dwell inside their own minds unless invited to do otherwise. But there are always a few chatty ones. This class is down right verbose.

Most of my students have the ability to control their talking, and they are expected to work silently while they practice reading, work out math problems, and write. If they are talking out of turn it is generally off task and there are consequences. Students need to take a break, change their seating, conference with me at the start of recess. These are quick fixes.

But I have a few students who verbalize continuously throughout the day, almost without stop. We have tools to help them curb this instinct, for the sake of all of our sanity. They set goals for number of silent minutes of work and monitor this goal with a chart. They use whisper phones (pieces of PVC joints put together to form a little tube so they can speak into their own ear without projecting their voice) and chewing gum and other tools to provide the sensory input they are seeking. They jot their ideas on sticky notes and in special notebooks so their most important ideas won't be lost. But still they talk, to themselves, to their neighbors, to me. I think it is safe to say that my classroom is almost never silent.

After watching the video game design club yesterday I was reminded: They are talking because they need to.

Talking is not bad. It is one of the characteristics that defines us a humans. Part of our school's mission is to raise responsible citizens by teaching them "complex communication," which includes talking. I hold this truth at the back of my head during lessons and try to build in lots of opportunities for students to talk about their ideas and work collaboratively. Most of my students, especially the verbose ones, use these opportunities productively. When I ask them to "turn and talk to a partner" about a learning target or question, they whip around to their neighbor and launch into a detailed description of their ideas, rarely pausing to listen to their partner. Some kids still use these invitations as a chance to check-in about recess or joke around, having stifled this desire to chat for the past ten minutes, but the majority are just happy to talk about ANYTHING, even if it is making inferences about wordless text.

My classroom has never been quiet. I have always regarded other classrooms with awe when I pass by the glass doors first thing in the morning and the students are sitting silently at their desks and reading. At my last position I was fired partially on the premise that my classroom was not silent and therefor not productive. It is a common belief, and you may be thinking it while reading this, that the sign of a good teacher is her ability to make a classroom of students be silent. I will admit, part of me believes this, and I have spent ten years trying to figure out how to make children be silent.

There is the chime. The hand clap. The "One, two, three, eyes on me." The lights off. The tallies on the board for silent minutes. The extra recess. The promise of a pajama party. The threats. The confiscated recess. Our school uses the call and response, "Ago!... Ame!" to get the attention (and silence) of students. I know for a fact that this works less than 10% of the time (if the goal is to achieve silence) because we spent two weeks gathering data. I said "Ago!" about 20 times a day. It took them more than two weeks to follow "Ame!" with silence twenty times. And then I rewarded them with a day of chewing gum. It is an uphill battle.

Both research and intuition tells us that talking is beneficial. When we talk out our troubles we are less worried. When we talk out our ideas we are more clear. When we talk to others we are less isolated. When I return to my classroom next week I want to acknowledge the importance of talking to my students. I want to give them more opportunities to do it, find time for them to do it recreationally, and teach them how to do it productively. I want to honor their ideas, jokes, fears and questions.

I want them to talk. I want to listen.

And when I get home at the end of the day I will listen to the ideas, jokes, fears and questions of my own children, ages six and eight, who also need to be talk and be heard... not to mention my husband who is also human. Until finally it is eleven o'clock, and I can turn out the light and close my eyes. In silence.