How teachers fail quiet students
“Turn to the exercise on page 83,” our seventh grade math teacher instructed. I opened my textbook and started flipping through the pages.
No more than a few seconds later this teacher made a beeline to my desk and was rapidly turning the pages in my math book. She slammed the book flat once she reached the exercise and was back at her desk just as quickly, continuing the lesson with no explanation for what just happened.
I had no idea why this woman felt the need to single me out in such a way. I paid attention, I was never disruptive, and as far as I remember my performance was average at best. My only guess, based on experience, is that it was because I was a quiet student, and as such assumed that I was somehow incapable of finding the exercise on my own.
It’s an assumption that’s followed me from pre-school all the way to the workplace: impatient supervisors who think I don’t pay attention and expect me to take ages to finish a task, only to see me complete it in half the time. Teachers who would beam, “I’m so PROUD of you!” after watching me give an assigned presentation, as if they’d expected me to stand in front of the class and stare into space for three and a half minutes.
Over time, having such low expectations placed upon you simply for being quiet become internalized, and morph into turn into a type of self-fulfilling prophecy.
When you’re in kindergarten and you find out that your teacher decided you were too shy to play a sugar plum fairy, it makes it less likely that you’ll raise your hand for Show and Tell, or volunteer to help the new kid at recess.
When a college professor smiles down at you and refers to you as “the soft spoken one” when it’s your turn to speak, you feel less inclined to give your opinion on future topics.
For quiet students, it can feel like teachers never see you, and not simply because you don’t “speak up” in class. Many teachers, desiring predictability and conformity, unfairly project their own biases onto their students with very little insight into who a child really is.
When I was in the third grade, my friends and I were all about jokes. Long form ones that began with, “A guy walks into a bakery” and ended with, “that’s the wrong aardvark, lady.”
One day I had one of these memorized and ready to tell my friend. I was at my friend’s desk, deep into my narrative when our teacher, who happened to be standing nearby, remarked to her assistant, “I can’t imagine Adrienne telling a joke!” They chuckled to one another.
Our teacher’s comment didn’t stop me from finishing my gag, but it did add to an increasingly distorted view I was developing about myself.
In that moment I thought I was just being myself. I mean, there was nothing off-color about the joke I was telling. I told far worse at recess.
Was I not allowed to be funny? Did my being seen as “quiet” mean I wasn’t supposed to have a personality? Did it not occur to my teacher that such a careless remark might leave a child feeling completely confused and humiliated?
Even positive assumptions could have a negative impact. This same teacher, running on the idea that “quiet” equals being “well-behaved,” decided that sitting a boy with behavioral problems next to me would fix his issues.
First of all, can we agree that this is a terrible solution to a widespread problem? I thought this situation was unique to me in this one instance, but I’ve been hearing more women, and even a lot of introverted men, say they had this same experience when they were young.
We’re not helping disruptive boys manage their behavior, we’re burdening girls and quiet kids by causing them undue stress and teaching them that they’re responsible for the behavior of others.
Of course, sitting this kid next to me didn’t fix anything and I hated every minute of it. All we did was fight like two hamsters in a cage until the teacher finally realized the boy was better off elsewhere.
Funny enough, this boy and I got along great outside of school, but we were completely different kids at home. We swore, played ding dong ditch, and set small fires in the field behind our apartment complex (okay, that was all him, but I stood watch.) I was in no position to be this kid’s babysitter.
It took a mini breakdown over an art lesson for me to finally make a connection with a teacher who understood me.
I can’t remember if I was having trouble painting the correct number of spots on a giraffe or struggling to mix the right shade of green, but on this one day in the fourth grade I was just having trouble putting two and two together and not getting the same results as everyone else.
I became so frustrated that I started to cry. I wasn’t having a tantrum, but I just couldn’t stop the tears from falling down my face as I tried to correct my mistake.
Most teachers I’d had would’ve berated me in front of my classmates for showing any level of emotion. There would have been a suggested visit to the school counselor, or a concerned note sent home asking my mom if there were any “problems outside of school.”
Instead, this teacher, Mrs. Hayes, was incredibly patient with me. Instead of choosing to reprimand me for being upset she recognized that I was feeling overwhelmed and exercised empathy and compassion to help me work through my frustration.
Afterward, Mrs. Hayes spoke to me in private and told me that she could tell I had a soft heart, just like her. She met me on my level and didn’t make me feel like there was anything about me that I needed to fix or overcome. Later on, Mrs. Hayes would come to recognize and encourage my writing ability, an invaluable outlet for expression for when the world demands we need to shout and compete to be heard.
I sympathize with teachers who are stretched beyond their capacity to give each student the time and attention they need. But a crucial thing for educators to remember is that every student has needs that are unique, and that taking the time to pause and see a student for who they really are goes a long way, for the student, for teachers and the success of the entire classroom.
