The Sounds of Silence--Do We Crave or Dread?

I have read some things in the past week or so that have given me pause.

First, this paragraph from a blog post from John Spencer (@edrethink) titled "My Biggest Concern with Devices."

"I wonder if the constant stream of conversations in social media are making it too difficult for people to be alone. Collectively, we've grown edgy with silence. We have a hard time with being alone with our own minds without being digitally tethered to other people. The problem is not that we have grown anti-social. The real problem is that we are social all the time."

--John Spencer

And then, this quote from the beginning of Chapter 3 of The Multiplier Effect by Wiseman, Allen, and Foster (Corwin, 2013).

"Between stimulus and response there is space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

--Viktor E. Frankl

Those of us in education are used to noise.  Lots of it.  So you would think when we leave the school environment we would crave silence.  But I find myself filling that space--radio, music, TV.....

Have we grown 'edgy with silence?'  Does wait time in the classroom make us uncomfortable?  Is there wait time, or do we or our students jump to fill it in?  I make myself physically count off the seconds in my head when I am presenting or teaching--yet still I know I miss countless opportunities for reflective silence.   And while there are never enough hours in a day, 3 minutes of silent thinking or writing feels like forever.

In leadership training, we learn about the power of reflective practice.  And I have made attempts to improve on this.  But with so much information available, I click and read, click and read.  I'm reading more, but reflecting less.

And then along came our instructional leadership team's blogging challenge.  I started to blog because I am a wee bit competitive.  (Oh and to be a good model--yes, that's it--to be a good model!)   But a few things happened along the way.  First, I was so inspired by our teacher leaders--their courage in new roles and their honest reflections about the journey and their growth.  This inspired me to be more thoughtful and reflective in my own writing.  And true to what we know about the reading/writing connection, now when I read blogs or articles, I read more deeply and thoughtfully.  So with this inspiration comes commitment--taking time to be reflective in this blog space.  Using silence as a space to think, wonder, and create.  For ourselves and for our students.

I want to close with the Frankl quote again because it becomes more powerful to me each time I read it.

"Between stimulus and response there is space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

--Viktor E. Frankl

Shhhhh..........