Some thoughts about introversion and extraversion, gregariousness and shyness.
Part one: Do extraverts make better teachers?
I’ve been having a discussion with a principal lately about what makes a successful teacher. We’ve been looking at some student engagement data from the first week of school: included in this data is student feelings about math. Even on day one, there are teachers whose students score just a nudge higher in their feelings about month. I want to toss off those differences as coincidental: what could a teacher have done in the first three, two, or even one days of class that would cause a difference in the mostly-random assortment of students in front of them? My assistant principal disagrees, but struggles to say exactly why. Her first attempt, however, said a lot.
“It’s just–a kid walks in the room and–they just see a teacher–who’s just–you know–dynamic,” she said. “And they might think, hey, maybe this will be okay?”
I disagree.
It’s easy, when we look at pop culture depictions of good teachers, to fall into the trap of believing that, to be a good teacher, one has to be a dynamic, charismatic extravert. (Important note: while we often conflate extraversion with charisma and a big personality. Not so: there are shy extraverts and gregarious introverts. The question isn’t in personality: it’s in whether one recharges around people or while alone.) My first thought about dynamic teachers is John Keating in Dead Poets Society. Now, I like the dude as much as any English teacher does, but his extraversion and stage presence are substitutes for the kind of 21st century pedagogy that we want more of (student voice and dialogue, student thinking…). He’d do poorly on whatever rubric your school uses, Danielson, Marzano or otherwise. But, as my buddy Tony Smith points out, a ton of what makes good teaching makes for lousy movie scenes. If we walk into a room and find all of the students reading, for instance, that’s a really good classroom of thinking kids expanding their brains…and it would make for an unbelievably boring movie.
I’ve spent some time searching around, and I can’t find persuasive evidence that extraverts make better teachers than introverts. As best as I can tell, there’s not a lot of correlation between teacher extraversion and academic achievement, and what there is is (1) mostly at the college level and (2) reported in student evaluations rather than in what kids know and can do. (Here’s a meta-analysis: let me know if I have misinterpreted it.)
I am thinking of a pair of math teachers I have worked with. One is extraverted, at least to my eye: funny, loud, constantly in conversation with kids doing math. Come Friday afternoon, he’s the life of the party at the weekly teacher watering hole. The other is likely introverted: a quiet, smiley mom who wanders around the room and helps kids as they need it. On Friday afternoon, she’s not with the teachers cutting loose: she’s at home with her family, probably reading to her kids.
Each teachers room is packed with kids who will learn the material and know their teacher cares about them. I can’t for the life of me see why I’d prefer the “dynamic” teacher over the quiet one for my own sons. Both are wonderful, both get the math into the kids’ brains, and both communicate that their students are valuable, cared for, and that the teacher is all-in on helping them.
My sophomore son Steven, when he found out what I am writing about tonight, had an interesting point. He said that even if an introverted teacher is really good and Steven understands the material really well, he won’t love the material as he would from the extraverted good teacher. He believes that the extraverted good teacher is more likely to imbue the classroom with an infectious love of subject that the introvert might not do as well. I do wonder if he’s thinking about stage presence and dynamism rather than introversion/extraversion. I also wonder if this is what students are thinking of up in those teacher reviews that prefer extraverted teachers to introverts. It is important to be entertained as a student, and maybe extraverts do that a little better by virtue of having more practice and comfort with interaction.
Still, I know that a self-aware introvert can mange a full day in front of kids using thoughtful strategies. My wife is a successful Social Studies teacher and a dyed-in-the-wool introvert. You wouldn’t know if if you watched her teach, though, as she engages with her kids, both individually and as a group, constantly and energetically. I just asked her how she manages the daily energy suck this surely is for her introverted soul. She says she has two strategies. One is that she comes home and hides in her room for a little while until she feels rejuvenated. The other is her awareness that the person she is in front of the class is a persona: a role she plays. It seems to be working for her: she still loves her job and will stay at it until she is of retirement age.
So it seems to me that anyone can be a successful teacher regardless of whether they get their energy from other people or from time alone.
How should we coach our most introverted teachers?
That said, I worry about other teacher introverts.
When I asked the teachers I coach for their embodiments this year, one teacher had a fascinating and challenging answer. They chose an osprey. And in the Google Form question where I asked why, they said that they like that osprey migrate alone. When I imagine migrating birds, I think of whole flocks of them, in a V-shape overhead, heading south. Osprey don’t do that. They get to their destination on their own. I learn a lot about the teacher from this choice—but even if I didn’t get the metaphor, they spelled it out for me directly, saying something like this when I asked why they chose her embodiment (what follows is a paraphrase):
Whenever we are asked to improve and learn as teachers, we wind up doing it in a big group. While I love my colleagues, I want to do some learning on my own! I want to be in my room and reading and researching and thinking by myself. That’s how I get better.
While this sort of blew my extraverted mind, it’s sort of obvious with a little thought. As much as I like learning alongside others, much of my lifelong learning has been in isolation: just me engaging with a smart person or a tough idea which sits on the other side of the pages of a book. Yes, I have learned with and from colleagues, but if I had to break down the percentage of solo learning versus group learning I’ve done, I don’t know what numbers I’d lay down.
When I saw this teacher’s self-description, I decided to handle them differently from all of the others I deal with this year. My commitment to sit down for one-on-one conversations with each teacher this year? I have decided that does not apply to that teacher. I emailed them and said that, for them to learn optimally, probably the best way for me to coach them would be to serve as their research lackey. I asked them what they wanted to learn about.
Success: to be determined. I got an email a week later thanking me for my “sensitive response.” That email may have been a brush-off: they said they are super overwhelmed with the start of the year, and can I get back to them in a month? I will–I have it in my Google Calendar to email that teacher in mid-October. We’ll see if my UDL individuated PD efforts for this teacher work. (They’ll do fine in the meantime. Their classroom is joy-filled and fun…they, like my wife, know how to play the role.)
I do wonder, however, if an introvert constantly forced to interact with colleagues on top of with spending five hours a day playing a role with students is more likely to burn out than an extravert. The numbers don’t say so…maybe many introverts self-select out of the profession?...but I still wonder.
How can a shy extravert who wants to make connections navigate a professional conference?
This last question is about me.
After saving up my contractual professional development money for a few years, I am slated to attend the Teaching Learning Coaching Conference in New Orleans in October. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am as excited for this as I have been for anything I’ve done professionally. I think back to my experience at Jim Knight’s Instructional Coaching Institute in Kansas in January 2020. (Check it out! That’s a blurry version of me, facing the camera!)
from Instructional Coaches Group website
I was a year and a half into this gig when I went to Kansas, and it was there that I learned exactly what it is that I am actually meant to do–and I was overjoyed. I headed back to Washington, and did an Impact Cycle based on student engagement with a teacher. She reached her student engagement data goal on March, 13th, 2020, which was a good thing because that was the last day of school for nearly a year.
But I digress. What excites me the most about TLC is the chance to meet all sorts of fellow instructional coaches. I want to create some connections that I hold onto–set up relationships with professionals who understand what I do every day, and manage to have a set of people I can exchange ideas with via text or email or blog.
The problem with this is that, while I am extraverted, I am shy.
It was my wife who pointed out that I am a shy extravert, which is every bit as much a thing as a gregarious introvert. What I missed most while I was stuck at home during the pandemic was hanging out with strangers. I found I like sitting in a coffee shop reading while having a bustle around me. In fact, the first big trip I took after I got my vaccine was a trip to the ballparks of New York. I will never forget the feeling of walking down Fifth Avenue and seeing all of the faces of people walking by me. I have no interest in shopping, but I loved the faces–faces that had been denied me for so long. Old, young, every race, every gender, beautiful, homely…I kept seeing the faces of strangers, and I had missed them so much. While my introverted wife was struggling during the pandemic because she was in such close quarters with me and her kids (she managed by going off on long, long drives every day), I was struggling at never seeing the faces or hearing the voices of strangers. While she recharges by getting time alone, I recharge by spending time around people.
But here’s the thing: I just want to be around people. I struggle with initiating conversation with them.
Take a big party. While I like being around a lot of strangers, I can’t stand being at a huge party where I don’t know anyone. I do not do well with initiating conversation, coming up with the right small talk, figuring out where to stand, who to hang out with…it feels like I’m back in middle school and worried about doing the wrong thing. Now, add four close friends of mine to that party, and I will really enjoy it. I’ll sit with my friends and I will enjoy the conversation. If strangers wander into that conversation, I will enjoy meeting them and find a way to talk with them, because I have a place that is my own and makes sense.
New Orleans will not offer me any comfortable spot of my own. I am traveling solo, with none of my district colleagues.
So my discomfort with initiating conversation with new people is running completely against my #1 goal of connecting with as many people as possible.
Here, I am simply stating as clearly as I can (and you can hold me accountable):
In New Orleans, I am going to initiate conversations with as many coaches as possible. I am going to meet people, get emails and numbers, talk shop, talk philosophy, share this blog (if you see this…hi, new friends!). I am staying at the convention hotel. Rather than watching the World Series in my room, I will watch it at the hotel bar and find fellow conventioneers. We will discuss baseball. We will discuss work. I will leave with people to chat with and exchange problems of practice.
If any of you is a shy extrovert and has any tips for how to make myself initiate contact, let me know. And if any of you plans to be in New Orleans for TLC…let me know that!