2nd February 2018 1:00
By Blue Tutors
It can be hard to determine exactly how a shy student is faring in a classroom environment. With the hubbub of more brazens students, the two at the back who never seem to stop talking and the others you’ve always got half an ear on, the shy and introverted kids can get lost in the white noise of it all.
Introverted students can become fatigued as the day progresses. As people who naturally gain strength ad energy from more quiet environments and greater levels of solitude, the loud and crowded spaces of school classrooms can overwhelm them and reduce stimulation. Extroverts, as we all know, thrive in the opposite manner, but it is important as a teacher and tutor to start to recognise these things in your pupils, if only so you can begin to tailor how you request work from students accordingly. This is not to say that the extroverted kids should always be given the group tasks while the introverted child quietly studies to the side of this commotion; all children need to be exposed to learning environments of all hues. But if, for example, you feel pretty sure you have even one introverted child in your classroom, attempting to make space in every lesson for quiet study time - something that doesn’t require answering questions aloud or talking in pairs, even for just five minutes, can help you to see how you can help that child. It allows you to assess exactly how well they understand a topic when they rarely or never put their hand up to prove it, and can give them time to really consolidate the things you’ve been covering in that lesson. One big name on the topic, Susan Cain, claims that changes are necessary to care for introverted students. ‘As well as being the fair thing to do, it’s also well worth nurturing introvert talent; introverted students have many characteristics that make them ideally suited to academia, including the tendency to apply themselves to their study, think more deeply around a subject and pay attention to detail.’
The BBC Active website holds many tips and hints for how to manage a classroom, as most are, composed of such variety of personalities: ‘Shyness is a little different. Shy people are anxious about public situations and may worry about how people perceive them. It’s possible to be a shy student with an extrovert personality (imagine a pupil who loves to perform on stage, but suffers from stage fright), or an introvert who feels more at home in quiet situations, but is not worried about speaking up around others. Equally, the classroom will also be made up of many shy introverts and confident extroverts. In many ways, shyness can be more of an educational disadvantage than introversion. The shy student may avoid asking questions or volunteering answers in class because they fear the embarrassment of looking stupid or getting it wrong. Or they may simply avoid attention wherever possible, preferring to sit tight and stay quiet. If a question-and-answer format in a crowded classroom is the main form of teaching, shy students risk falling behind if they fail to grasp a subject.’
Here is a breakdown of a few more of the tips that can be found on the site:
Working in pairs and smaller groups offers a great way for shyer pupils to gain confidence, and ensures that shy students can find their voice.
Consider changing the seating arrangement of your classroom in an effort to create a more welcoming and less intimidating environment, such as sitting in a horseshoe shape where class sized permit.
If every member of class a special job from the start of the year, and shy individuals are given the responsibility of handing out worksheets, for example, then this gets them used to being more active around everyone in the classroom, allowing them to feel safe branching out into other methods of communication.
‘Gradually start enlarging group activities by having each pair’s work feed into larger teams formed by combining pairs. Shy students feel more comfortable when they have a partner to share the responsibility of their input to the larger group so this dynamic helps them feel safer contributing to the discussion. They can also benefit from working with the same teams regularly as this gives them a sense of familiarity and trust where they are more comfortable sharing their ideas. Build up group size in this way and start exposing shy students to the more outgoing ones as they gain in confidence.’
Indeed, as the Active website so truthfully says, ‘watching shy students blossom and gain confidence through collaborative learning is one of the great pleasures of being a teacher’.