My quiet classroom.
I love quiet.
My grandpa taught me that we have two ears and only one mouth so we should listen twice as much as we speak.
I had no problem putting his teaching into practice, because I was a reader and a writer and was comfortable with long and deep silences.
I still have no problem putting his teaching into practice.
I still am a reader and a writer who is comfortable with long and deep silences.
An elementary school is not a place for quiet.
From 7:15 AM until 2:45 PM I am on the move, teaching my heart out, moving and shaking, shucking and jiving, ducking and weaving with 40 nine and ten year olds in my own classroom and 500 kids of all ages around our school building.
I disobey my grandpa.
I find myself speaking twice as much as I listen.
“I need every person in this room to be still and look at me with both eyes and listen to me with both ears.”
“If you decompose this big number and multiply it in small parts then your brain can be a calculator!”
“Light can travel through space but sound can’t!”
“Do you understand this?!”
“Isn’t that amazing?!”
“Flat tire!” I say.
My students go, “Shhhhh.”
Brisya, one of my wonderful students from Latin America, taught me this strategy.
“We need a phrase that will help us be quiet, Mr. Barton,” she told me one day as I was checking daily planners.
The truth is, there isn’t very much “Shhhhh” during the school day.
And that’s okay.
Learning is active.
The quiet didn’t start for me today, though, until 3 PM.
I was in the cafeteria, waiting with the car riders until their parents and after school buses came to pick them up.
3 students were left at the 4th grade table with me - Abigail, Alex, Arianna - and each one was talking my ears off.
At the same time.
They were telling me stories...asking me questions...giving me answers before I had a chance to say anything.
I got conversation whiplash trying to look at and listen to each student.
In the middle of the words I sighed a little and smiled.
“The quiet will soon come,” I thought. “Listen to the chaos and learn.”
I learned that Abigail has a baby sister who puts surprises in her backpack. When she comes to school and opens her backpack to get out her materials for the day, she finds stuffed animals, jelly beans and all kinds of toddler things that weren’t there when she closed it for the night.
I learned that Alex has a teenaged sister who won’t let him tag along with her when she is with her friends. “But one of my friends invited me to a haunted house this month,” he said, “And she’s NOT coming with me. So there,” he smiled.
I learned that Arianna and her dad get up before sunrise and do sit-ups and push ups together in their back yard. “It gets my brain moving before I get to school,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s why I’m so smart.”
Now I’m in my quiet classroom.
Smiling at the beauty, wonder and genius of life.
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