The Low Talker

I was leading an eleventh grade class discussion (which usually involved a conversation among five people in the room—yours truly and six students.)  This was before I read the research that confirmed that most “class” discussions involved only five or six people with the teacher doing most of the talking.  I think it was B.F. Skinner, the behaviorist, who queried, “Who needs the most practice in talking, in expressing oneself?”  Skinner’s next question was, “In the conventional classroom who does the most talking?” But this was before I learned how to engage more than six students.

So I was working hard to inspire my students to think, in this case to think about Stephen Crane and naturalism in literature and whether or not our lives were dictated by forces beyond our control.  There was a pause, and I studied their faces for what we now call “formative assessments,” to ascertain whether they were getting it or not.  Most faces I read were in Happy Valley, belying their thinking which drifted to where to take Mary Lou on Saturday night or what jumper Trixie would wear tomorrow or whether the Eagles would beat the hated Cowboys on Sunday.  A few, a very few, were knocking off brain cells considering the question I posed:  “Were their lives predetermined or did they have freedom of choice?”

Like comedy, teaching often depends heavily on a sense of timing.  I wanted my query to work its way along their neural pathways, and, for some students, this journey is arduous.  So I waited. Suddenly, abruptly shattering the thoughtful silence, Jerry, a rather heavyset lad with a perpetual red face practically jumps out of his desk.

“Hey, Mr. Maltese!!  Hey, Mr. Maltese!!  I just had a great idea!!  A great idea!!”  Jerry was half out of his desk, hand raised to the ceiling.

“Go, Jerry.”

“Mr. Maltese!!  I was thinking!!! (a huge breakthrough).  Suppose, just suppose, we are not real?  Suppose all of us, everything, is just somebody’s imagination?  Suppose some great being is dreaming and we are just part of his dream?  How about that?!”

“Jerry, that is fantastic thinking.”  Okay, I did not have the heart to tell Jerry that Descartes and other philosophers had developed that same supposition centuries before.  One of the lessons I learned early on about teaching was that what may be old to us is new to someone else.  The idea was new to Jerry, and to squash his “discovery” is to commit the cardinal sin of eradicating wonder.  Besides his revelation proved he was thinking.

Iago shouted to Jerry, “You a…….e, I ain’t no part of someone else’s dream.  I’m real and, if you come over here, I’ll break your nose and show you how real I am.”

I raised my voice so that it boomed across the room and blasted Iago in his face.  “How dare you call anyone names and insult their thinking!  How dare you!”  And I went on dressing down Iago for a few minutes.

In the beginning of the school year my foremost goal is to develop a classroom climate conducive to learning.  It is hard to develop but necessary.  Part of that effort involves sending the message that I, the teacher, would not allow bullies to intimidate the class.  At the commencement of the school term, students are more fearful of their classmates than they are of the teacher.  In sizing up the instructor, students want to know if I would protect them from the predators, if I was in charge.  I have seen too many novice teachers begin the year with something like, “Hi, I am your teacher, Bob.  Bob is easy to remember because it is the same spelled backwards.  More than your teacher, I am your friend, and we are going to have lots of fun this year.”  The good students are thinking “This guy couldn’t save me from a falling leaf.” And the sharks start swimming around the tank. So,  the first time a student makes even the slightest insult I would be all over that pupil as the adage says, “like a cheap suit,” usually out of all proportion to the actual offense.  Message sent.

So when Iago slunk down in his seat, appropriately chastised, I noticed this “Whooooaaa!” rising as a chorus from the rest of the class.

“Mr. Maltese, we never heard you raise your voice before.”

That was true.  I never was a shouter.  There were teachers down the hall who were shouters, and the shouting never seemed to alter the behavior of the students since the shouting never seemed to stop. Einstein’s quote:  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  When I tried to share Einstein’s witticism with my students, I realized that for some of them, especially those in Jerry’s class, it was a little too abstract.   So I changed it.  “You turn the key over in the ignition 99 times, and the car still doesn’t start, you don’t do it again.  You try something else.”  I once received the reply, “Mr. Maltese, what else am I gonna do?  Especially if I got no tools in the trunk?  Call my old man and piss him off because I forgot to get gas?  I try kicking it over again and pray.”

But with the Parkinson’s I have become a shouter. My vocal chords have apparently shrunk to vibrating reeds that could fit in a microchip or something.  In Seinfeld, nodding in response to a low talker’s request without hearing a word leads to disaster.  No such disaster has yet befallen me, but the potential is there.  People have to make a greater effort to hear me.  Their eyes narrow, they lean in as close as social norms allow, their lips try to follow mine, and their entire face scrunches up.  To me, who hears me perfectly, the listener seems deaf.  But I know the problem is with me, with the Parkinson’s, so I usually summon all my strength and channel into those tiny vocal chords and repeat what I said.  My “shout,” like a small breeze dissipating in the woods, fades to a whisper.

All those years of teaching and I shouted maybe twice, once when I received a really nasty paper cut from a manila envelope.  My teaching mind is still here, but the teaching voice is gone, and that saddens me.  Almost all speech now is a strain.

There is a difference between hearing and listening.  What is really frustrating is knowing someone heard me but did not listen, so I have to repeat myself which, depending on how the Parkinson’s is that day, can be really exhausting.

Ultimately I have become quieter.  More and more conversations are between me and me.  After all, what is thinking but having a conversation with oneself?  And I don’t have to shout.