Loquacious am I
I sent an email to my boss the other day, which I began by writing ‘Treat this as me thinking out loud’… I was contemplating why I felt it so necessary to write out my thoughts and email them to someone who is so very very busy – I know she wants my input and ideas, and is always happy to discuss new things/old things, but why did I need to send those ideas that way?
I’ve decided that it is a symptom of my personal thinking processes, as is my well-deserved reputation for being rather talkative. I tend to collect lots of information and ideas on a topic and float them around in my head, and then work out my understanding and analysis and new ideas by putting it all into words. The words aren’t there in fully formed sentences in my head – the act of fitting the right words to the shapes of my thoughts helps me to define my conclusions to myself.
This can be somewhat unfortunate for the poor soul enduring yet another ear-bashing as I work out how best to deal with student X or to fix problem Y.
Do you know what is odd about this habit of mine? I can’t use a diary as my sounding board. I need the feeling of speaking to another person – I need that bounce-back of someone else’s rephrasing or reply.
This learning style may be helpful in being a reflective teacher who thinks about their own practice, but what about in the classroom? Now I have to think about how to prevent my personal preference for oodles of verbiage from interfering with my student’s boyish preference for direct and specific instruction that gets to the point and gives them a clear goal with no distracting tangential asides.
The long haul begins….