Reaching the Quiet Kids in Class
July 13, 2019
By: Stacey Roshan
Source: EdSurge
As a student, my mindset was that everything needed to be perfect; anything less was unacceptable. Taking the risk to raise my hand in class, when I wanted to contribute my thoughts, was always a challenge for me. But none of my teachers ever seemed to recognize this; or if they did, they never acknowledged it.
The thing is, I really wanted to contribute to class discussions. I just didn’t always know how to. And on top of my perfectionism, I was slow. Because I did well in school, nobody was ever concerned. However, from the time I was in elementary school, it was difficult to complete assessments on time, and it always took me unreasonably long to finish homework in the evening.
When I was in grad school, I had a teacher who carried a stack of name cards around the room. As he lectured, he would randomly pick names from the stack to call on students. That class was a nightmare for me.