Last week, I wrote about deep listening. This practice is inextricably linked to the ability to be in stillness, in quiet, even in the face of critical need. Classrooms are sites that quite literally hum with urgency - the need to teach, to assess, to intervene, to attend, to nurture, to correct, to move through protocols, systems and cycles as quickly as possible. To get to the work. After all, there are people—children, teenagers, adults—in classrooms right now. Their needs are urgent. Our educational pipeline is replete with yawning achievement gaps, under-resourced institutions, the need for living wages, the need for quality learning experiences. So, can we really afford to be in still?
But, as with all things counterintuitive, centering silence and contemplation in the midst of chaos is a balm to the hurried minds we possess, and to the hurried minds we seek to teach. Silence is actually quite necessary for optimal brain function, has been shown to increase academic achievement, and, in a controlled study of mice, those exposed to silence (as opposed to ambient sounds, music, or white noise) were shown to actually “regenerate nerve cells.” One of the great proponents of stillness in the classroom, Maria Montessori, felt silence was a powerful teacher to children, saying it “…often brings us the knowledge which we had not fully realized, that we possess within ourselves an interior life. The child by means of silence sometimes becomes aware of this for the first time.” Today, there are groups of “silence enthusiasts” and audio ecologists who are fighting to preserve and document the last remaining silent places on earth so that we may all have auditory respite in the world. Even so, silence is not always welcome.
The term “monkey mind” (or, heart-mind monkey) is used in Buddhist, Doaist, and neo-Confucian traditions to describe the inner “chatter” we experience, our inner hurriedness. This restlessness usually manifests as internal monologue, often critical, which is loud enough to drown out common sense, core values, and our best intentions. When we invite silence and attempt to sit still in it, the monkey chatter begins. And so we fill that silence with words, or a playlist, or by gliding our thumbs across glass screens, seeking escape from ourselves. Our “twitchiness”—and that of our students—is a signal that we need a bit more practice with silence, a bit more stillness, in our lives.
It is difficult to stand in silence in a classroom. The average teacher waits a mere second after asking a question before responding to it themselves or moving on to the next concept. The use of “wait time” has been widely studied and three seconds is the minimum recommended waiting period after asking a well-formulated question. Standing in silence after asking a question until it is uncomfortable is one way of promoting reflection and stillness (and allows students to see stillness modeled by the instructor). Here are some other ideas:
After providing a prompt (video, quote, reading) instruct students to sit in stillness for 1-2 minutes before responding in small groups or large discussions—this will help them formulate their ideas more concretely and craft meaningful follow-up questions.
Create short spaces (3-5) minutes in your class for students to engage in “solo time” practices: sketch/doodle, work on a puzzle/sodoku, origami, and meditation.
Not all noise is distracting: playing sounds from nature—birdsongs, ocean waves, rustling trees—can be a way to ground students before instruction. You can pair these with visualization, journalling and/or breathing exercises.
The true purpose of “mindfulness” or “contemplative practice” - in our lives and in our classrooms - is to quiet our personal hungers, whatever they may be. To be able to sit in stillness without the need to be loved, admired, or feared. By creating brief but powerful moments of stillness and silence, we model for students how to quiet the mind and cultivate focus. If we can help our students to be fully present in their learning and their lives, that is a lesson they won’t soon forget.
3 Things Newly Noted
The “Relational Design” framework from Pause + Effect. I attended their introductory workshop today and it was a thought-provoking conversation about how to be in better relation with life in all its forms (and how to design with an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things).
On the theme of design and alternatives to dominant culture, Mirijam Missbichler’s “Why Japanese Websites Look so Different,” which looks at the technological, historical and cultural influences that shape the design of the internet as we know it.
Julia Galef’s accessible examination of “motivated reasoning” in The Scout Mindset. I especially appreciated the counterfactual tests she provides to distinguish the honest positions we hold from default biases in our thinking. I’m working on an article on decision-education (DE) and explored some of the more existential aspects of decision-making earlier this week.