An Experiment in Silence

After almost a week of rough days filled with rowdy children, yelling, and snide comments, I thought it was necessary to take my day in a new direction. So in an attempt to not shriek, or say anything to the children that I shouldn't, I figured the best path would be silence.

I heard the idea from a teacher who said she once got so tired of no one listening that she went in one day, indicated that she had lost her voice, and simply typed everything out. What a grand idea to add to my constantly evolving repertoire of attention-grabbing feats (which in the past have included speaking in an English accent, jumping on a chair, standing in tree pose for the duration of my instruction, and an impromptu brown paper bag puppet on which I drew a red uniform polo and spoke to as if it is the only student in the room).

So this morning I wrote the directions on the projector as the students entered and simply pointed and jabbed at the board over and over until they got the hint. My first period is my honors class, so they got the gist fairly quickly and sat down to silently read. During class, they quite enjoyed getting to yell out my typing at other students when they were misbehaving, and I started to think I was on to something.

Second period immediately proved this tactic would be a disaster. Not even two minutes in, I was resorting to wild arm gestures, tapping, clapping, jumping, and the largest all-cap words I could fit on the board telling them to stop what they were doing. I wish I could share a snapshot of the room, but that is illegal, so you will have to make do with these images:

-Three girls in the front of the room hitting each other - back and forth
-A boy lounging on his desk like it's his bed
-One boy frantically yelling out whatever I type, jumping up and down
-A girl yelling at that boy
-Another girl swaying back and forth in front of the projector
-Many, many, oh-too-many shadow puppets

Not wanting to give in, I tried and tried again, resorting to bribing the students who would read my words aloud with candy. By third mod I gave up and greeted them with a vocal hello.

Unfortunately the negativity I was trying to avoid was not lost by my attempt at silence; it was just converted. My yells turned into flails and the yells of other students, and it was still as hectic as ever.

It seems that in my classroom, negativity is a highly communicable disease. The kids say things to each other and about each other that I still haven't grown numb to, today a girl looked straight at me and said I was "dumb" (and that was rather tame), and then suddenly I'm running off with sarcastic comments back. But it seems that when I use my most polite voice, greet the students at the door with a good afternoon, how are you, THAT just flows away and is never seen again.

When I told one of the other teachers my dilemma, stating "I can't believe I said that to a child!", she responded, "Brittany, they are not children, they are grown."

But aren't 8th graders still kids? How do I teach an 8th grader how to be nice? I am frequently reminded "Ms. Z, you don't teach kindergarten", and always respond "(student), you aren't in kindergarten!".

I suppose I will have to start with some form of vocality - silence experiment failed.