“You mean introverts are real?”

My views on how we run schools has been totally shaken since reading Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking (2012). Yes, very late to the party, but as a card carrying extrovert, I have been ignoring introverts for most of my life, so perhaps there’s no surprise there.

Except that is not entirely fair. It’s not so much I was ignoring them, I just did not really believe that they existed. I knew that some people defined themselves as such, but I thought it was a bit like,…. well, trying to cover a deficiency with a label. I often confused shyness, a lack of confidence, anti-social behaviour, hating music, nothing to say, or easily offended, for something that is much more complex and widespread.

At the simplest level, an introvert is ‘fed’ by time on their own and focussed activities. They might love being at a party, but are drained by the end of it. An extrovert is the opposite and ‘feeds’ on social encounters, new information and ‘buzz’. Few people are at the extremes, and we might have aspects of the other, however most will recognise themselves in these simple questions.

Somewhere between a third and a half of people call themselves introverts and, if we accept the ideas in Quiet – that introversion is becoming harder to fit with modern culture – then we can assume that most people avoid being labelled this way. So, let’s just say 50% of people are on the ‘introvert’ side of the bell curve.

So, in reading this book I realised that half the people I have spoken to are fundamentally different to me. Not a little bit, but a LOT. It was like discovering that half the people you know are women! It was like seeing a whole new gender for the first time.

I’m really interested in what this means for schools. Susan Cain has a few thoughts here, and teachers guide here; but lots of others have thought about this, and there was an #eltchat on this topic here.

I had a few insights I wanted to share:

Extroverts need help too!

• all children (but extroverts especially) need help understanding the differences between extroverts and introverts and accepting it

• extroverts need a positive language for introvert peers: focussed, reflective, etc, rather than shy, distant, uncooperative.

• extroverts are energised by social activity, and work better when they can learn in these settings, but need a chance to learn from and with introverts

• our schools,classrooms and playgrounds might suit extroverts more, but our testing suits introverts more.

We are really good at harming introverts!

School environments are rarely friendly places for an introvert – and teachers don’t have an interest in this changing, at the moment. Susan Cain covers this really well in her book, but there are very few quiet places in a school, where a child is not being judged, observed or forced into groups. There are lots of things we could do to help introverts:

• Allow kids to stay in at breaktime

• Allow kids to be out of view at breaktime, in the playground, but safe from bullying.

• Allow for solitary activities in the playground

• Allow kids to opt out of groupwork

• Allow kids to learn at their own pace

• Reorganise our classrooms so that there is space for reflection and quiet.

• Do less groupwork.

But, try to imagine implementing even half of these before September. I bet it would stretch the patience of your staff and the potential in your site.  Yet, can you imagine creating an environment so prejudicial to, say, women? Think how hard we allow for other minority differences (and so we should).

We MUST think harder how our space, pedagogies and assessment makes sense of these differences in our pupils. I think a move towards project based learning would support the sort of shift we need, where the strengths of an introvert can be proven valuable to group outcomes and assessments.

Teachers are losing out too!

Finally, I also think we need to reflect on the staff we have. Are teachers evenly split between extroverts and introverts and do we get the best of our colleagues in their current working approach?

I wonder how many teachers are unclear about why they find teaching so draining. They might think it is workload. Perhaps it is that they are introverts, and a day being social is great – but saps their energy. Without time and space to re-energise, these people will always suffer. Perhaps they leave teaching and become bloggers, researchers, artists, etc… because the profession could not accommodate all they had to offer schools?

 What do you think?

• Are more teachers extroverts than introverts?
• Does this even matter?
• Is there a way to measure the impact of appropriate settings for introverts and extroverts?