This is Part II of my blog post on introverts in schools. This segment focuses on how we can design collaboration for teachers to honor both extroverts and introverts.
In my last post, I explored ideas of honoring students and teachers in busy environments. Again, schools are vibrant places that rely on communication and collaboration, but they should also be places that promote introspection, reflection and going inward to understand. As leaders in the school, we are always pushing teacher collaboration, often with little regard to the opposite of collaboration.
The great Transcendentalist writer famously wrote, "I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude." and proclaimed in his essay, Walden, It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?" When I read this in high school, I was elated. There are the stories about the great writer Maya Angelou, who would rent a hotel room to be alone to write. As the story goes, she would have all the pictures removed and would lay across the bed and write. Likewise, the great author of The Color Purple, Alice Walker, wrote a stirring essay where she talks about being alone to "give birth" to the characters who would people her Pulitzer Prize winning book. I imagined as a young teacher (and dreamer), Van Gogh painting his pictures in perfect solitude. Solitude has a long line of engendering genius.
I am not capricious enough to think that in schools and other organizations that we would be able to or even need to work in solitude. What I do know is that solitude and reflection is necessary for some to process and toy with ideas. It is likely necessary for all to have this time and space to let ideas unfold in our minds. The point is that we need to sometimes allow the ideas to start in our minds and live in the group, Often with adults in schools we skip the first part and move from faculty meeting, parent meeting, to PLC meeting and shower our environments with ideas.
Meetings need to be designed to honor both introverts and extroverts, and schools need skills to understand both to maximize learning and engagement
We have to collaborate in schools. There is a ton of evidence that collaboration is good for the school community; however, often when we collaborate, we do not honor introverts in the process. Brenneman points to a quote from Peter DeWitt:
"Not everyone understands what collaboration actually means. Unfortunately, too many people want collaboration to mean that they are right and everyone should follow suit ... it's not about learning from others ... it's about learning from them (in their eyes)!"
Introverts often get lost in these collaborative meetings because they are designed for extroverts. Putting some simple designs in place can again honor both. These are suggestions and not exhaustive:
Have time built in where participants have a chance to process ideas before they go out into the room. Provide opportunity for written reflection. Again, be intentional about what you are doing Use a variety of protocols that will help honor all voices. There are a number of processes that you can put into place to help slow down the thinking in a group and get others to hear each others ideas. One of the basic processes I like to follow is to give people the opportunity to process in small groups (if there is a larger group) and make sure that each person has the chance to reflect, speak and paraphrase each other. In our work in our district with Adaptive Schools (Thinkingcollaborative.com), we are delving into the "ways of talking" and distinguishing between dialogue and discussion. Leaders need to be intentional about teaching staff the difference between the two: Dialoguing is when we are entertaining ideas and discussing is where decisions are being made (There is more to this, of course). Leaders also need to be intentional about helping groups process information in a way that allows for the individual in the group In some recent research I was doing, I stumbled upon an article from Festo Didactic Training & Consulting, Ltd. titled, "Putting the 'I' in Teams." This short article explains that to understand team dynamics one needs to look to nature in the form of a pack of wolves. One idea that comes out in the article is the following:
"The attitude of the wolf is always based upon the question, 'What is best for the pack?' They know explicitly what needs to be achieved for the survival of the pack. While there are alpha males and females, each member of the pack understands exactly what is expected of them. In truth, there are usually no more than five to eight wolves howling in a pack. The secret is that the wolves are always careful not to duplicate each other. Each wolf assumes a unique pitch, respecting the individuality of the other members of the pack."
Ideas live in the individual, and we need to have time and space to cultivate them. If ideas live solely in the individual, a group cannot give it life, refine it, challenge it, and validate it.
Part of the team dynamic is the respect and understanding that teams/groups have of the individual. Therefore, we need to make sure that teams understand the unique talents of each team member. Often as teams, we come together to collaborate with little understanding of who makes up the team. It is important to understand who the extroverts and introverts are in the team to intentionally plan for each member. When groups are dialoguing or discussing, care should be taken to engage members through their individual modalities. Susan Cain in Quiet explains in her TEDTalk that it is better for groups to think first in solitude and bring those ideas to the table for dialogue and discussion.
I often hear and have said that we need to promote collaboration to model for students what real-world skills look like. I agree, but we also need to model (and honor) what individuality looks like in the real-world. Ideas live in the individual, and we need to have time and space to cultivate them. If ideas live solely in the individual, a group cannot give it life, refine it, challenge it, and validate it. There are people who need to recharge in quiet solitude because that is their modality, so as responsible educators we need to model what this looks like in the classroom and in our school community. In her book, Quiet, Susan Cain sets out to explain the role of the introvert in our society, and to explain why introverts are important, but there is a tension between the self and society. If you have not seen the TED Talk from Susan Cain, you can view it here. She explains how well-known introverts have transformed the world (Ghandi, Steve Wazniak, Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Elanor Roosevelt, Lincoln). The world is a louder place and often we mistake extroversion for leadership. The truth is that we need both introverts and extroverts. We need solitude and collaboration. The pendulum has swung to embrace collaboration as a norm. Don't we owe it to our children and to ourselves to embrace solitude?