Rest Assured! Give Me My Time – And You’ll Get Yours!
By: Greg Rouault
The compulsory courses I have been teaching at my current institution with up to 35 students per class happen to be held in classrooms that are twice as wide as they are deep. I had not really thought of this much until I realized that I was never more than two big steps away (and together with a slight uptick in my tone) from less intrusively bringing back to consciousness the odd student who might be nodding off in search of rest. Of course, it must be both a physical and mental struggle for our university learners in Japan … many of whom have started their first ever part-time job to earn some spending money. Only to find that the late hours they might work for 1,000 yen/hour make them sleepy in classes whose per lesson tuition costs break out to over three times those earnings.
However, this story isn’t about those students or their critical thinking on choices. Rather it’s about the one thing that irked me the most in those classrooms and gave me pause. And that is, when I am talking (let’s call it teaching), and some students are also talking. It is not (really!) that I need to hear the sound of my own voice, but I know I’m not at ease hearing or competing with the sound of others. When I stepped back to reflect on my classroom scenarios where this “chat” would crop up, I found two categories: (1) the distracted, off-topic chatter between friends that some characters (or, given learner differences, let’s call them “individuals”) cannot seem to self-monitor or regulate and (2) the classroom habit some have developed (and I have seen evidence of this not solely being a foreign language course dilemma) of not taking personal responsibility for listening and instead immediately checking with a classmate what was said. This lack of concentration to focus on the input being given, and this learned or feigned helplessness is what I want to share my further insights on here. Because, for the chatter issue, I have realized that, rather than trying to talk louder over the students, the best classroom management method to break off their exchanges is to simply let … the room … go … totally … silent … where eventually the sound of their own voices alone becomes socially uncomfortable enough to stop their chatter.
Now, I am aware that having students understand what was said is a basic fundamental aim for teacher-fronted teaching, and that catching a deadline, or hearing the details about an upcoming assessment, or locking in on a cautionary reminder for an assignment all help in promoting better performances on output from our learners. Furthermore, since I like doing comprehension checks, having students use gestures for explanations, and taking quick show-of-hands class polls or surveys for my own confirmation, I should not be stepping on their attempts to clarify. Just don’t be doing it that way, on my time.
In our first lesson orientation, I’ve begun to clearly inform the students that the one rule I have in my class is that “when I am talking, no one else is talking.” (Well… two class rules actually, because the other is “if you use rock, paper, scissors (janken) in class you will be marked absent!” And that’s simply because such group decision making or instances for pair negotiation are rich opportunities for meaningful, real communication). I have felt it necessary to set down a rule to address the irksome practice that some students have of often defaulting to checking in with others while I am still talking. Because when chatting, it is quite likely that “the next thing” I have said is not being caught by either the student asking or the one stuck with being asked to provide a reply or even the one nearby dealing with added distraction. However, what I do present at the same time as the no-talking rule, is to relay to the students that I will be providing them with a break as time to check in with a partner after presenting a block of teaching, sharing some details on homework or assignments, or introducing revisions to the schedule or assessments. So as long as they give me my time, they will get theirs.
Thus, the reflection break that I took to step back and consider the reasons for the “problem” of this chit-chat for checking that I wanted to snuff out led me to essentially not teaching or repeating the points of clarification myself. Instead, I opted to assign time to have the students check in with their peers—providing them with a break, which some needed and would like to be doing anyway. This practice of taking a moment to check with others has become a routine that has changed the atmosphere and experience of classroom management for me and my students.
