7 Ways to Help Quiet Students Find Their Voices in Class

CAT Tracks Editor's Note:

As one of those "quiet students", I would urge caution...

...offer the opportunity to participate for those who might "want" to participate, but lack the confidence.

Encourage, but don't demand it, don't require it.

Bears repeating...

I fought a battle of passive resistance with my Cairo High School social studies teacher over this very issue...

...enduring a public scolding while she "offered" me the opportunity to give an oral report, a scolding that included the threat (the promise, as it turned out) of grade-docking should I decline her offer of "opportunity" to speak.

At the conclusion of her diatribe, she was rewarded with my eloquent response:

"No."

Oh, I wasn't defiant or surly. (Back in the day, students rarely did such a thing...that's why they call them "the good old days.")

I was meek, even. (No, I never inherited the earth as the Bible did say, but I did eventually inherit her position as CHS social studies teacher! :-)

Anyway...

I paid the price for exercising my "Miranda Rights", for not participating orally in class. From that day forward, my report card would read "89" (back when 89 was a C+ rather than the B+ it is today) despite my actual classroom work of A+.

I did learn a lesson about stubbornness...

...that it is sometimes rewarded.

On my final report card, she "caved" and "gave" me a 95.

Hey, another Bible analogy!

In retrospect, maybe her not-so-gentle push to get me to "stand up and speak" planted the mustard seed that led me later to stand up and speak for the CATs as president for two decades.