Silence Time
Xena Donovan
It was January 2015. I remember sitting in class, scrolling through Twitter, waiting for recess, when suddenly I stumbled upon a barricade of tweets, a mix of sadness, outrage, pity, disbelief. Brock Turner had raped an unconscious, half-naked young woman behind a dumpster, and she had written it all in a letter. I opened the article from Buzzfeed News, expectant, fearful and unsettled, feeling like I was being welcomed into an intimate event in which I had no place. An event where open wounds, a broken spirit and pain were displayed for the world to see. The girl, who decided to remain anonymous, stood in front of the jury and addressed her aggressor directly as she read her testament, a narration of what had happened that night and how she felt, and feels. She wrote what it was like being told she was raped and what it was like trying to live her life as a survivor of an incident that she has no memory of, an event that could have been unreal, if the scars had not been all over her body. She told him what she lost, how her whole life seemed worthless and her body foreign. How she had to relearn her name and identity and internalise that she is more than the drunken victim at a frat party. The bell rang, but I did not stand up. I did not answer when my friends called my name. They came over to see what I was reading, and I showed it to them. We were silent, as I imagined the rest of the world to be, but the letter was loud, twitter was loud, she was loud, so in unison, we were loud too.
We have to deal with the fact that we live in a world that does not validate rape victims and does not feel comfortable talking about sexual assault as a whole. Where the media have created a twisted discourse that somehow pins down the blame on the victims. Where how much you drank or what you were wearing is relevant. Where authorities diminish a crime and deny credibility. Where life-long taboos and stereotypes about victimhood are perpetuated, and the stigma that has prevented victims from regaining control, healing and breaking their silence has been exacerbated.
In differentiating instruction, process and learning preference are the keys. Process is how learners make sense of ideas, compose their thinking, and prepare a thoughtful answer. Learning preference, in the case of questions posed to the whole class, refers to how some students prefer to silently process the content, keeping their own counsel (Internal Thinkers), while others prefer to talk or express their thinking with an audience as a sounding board (External Thinkers).
One solution is for teachers to pause for five to 15 seconds before calling on students. The silence for some may feel unbearably long. Yet consider that the fastest male and female 100-meter sprinters in the world run at or under 10 seconds. The world record is under 10 seconds, which goes by quickly. Why not offer a similar amount of time for students to consider their responses to questions that require deep thinking?
Provide wait time: Give students five to 15 seconds to formulate a response to a question for which they should know the answer. Not every learner processes thinking at the same speed. Quality should be measured in the content of the answer, not the speediness.
Teach reflection: Coach students on the value and practice of reflection. Educators and students may appear to be uncomfortable with silence, hence the typical one-second pause time. Silence may be equated with nothing happening.
In reality, when students are provided with structured ways to practice thinking and specific directions about what to accomplish within the silent time, they can become more productive during reflection. Think From the Middle is a collection of approaches for students to hone their thinking processes during reflection and collaborative communication.
Students choose the starter stem that best supports the topic to be discussed. Teachers use the Talk Moves to coach and guide students to different levels of complex thinking by directing them toward different sections of conversation prompts. The intent is for students to own the conversation, which empowers their ability to process concepts for understanding.
We want students to become independent learners who can navigate challenging material and situations. Students learn at different paces, which seems less about intelligence and more about the time barriers put in the path of learning. There may be a place for timed responses and answering questions under the pressure of a clock, yet there are no standards that say that students should master concepts in less than one second.
Most people need adequate time to process their thoughts if they are expected to contribute to a conversation. Life is not a 30-minute game show with rapid-fire questions that require low-level answers, plus commercial breaks. Even if it were, one would need time to develop and master the processing skills to compete.
This exhibition will present seven large-scale sculptures by internationally esteemed Spanish sculptor, Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002). For the first time, Kansas City visitors will see work by this innovative, sometimes witty, but always powerful artist.
In another first, this exhibition will activate Theis Park just south of the Nelson-Atkins. Four sculptures will be on view in Theis Park and three will be on display in the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park on the south lawn of the museum. This project is being done in cooperation with the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department.
Over the years, it seemed the decibel level in the family just kept increasing. With four growing kids, someone was always trying to get out ahead, have a bigger voice, gain more recognition from Mom and Dad. And with the increased noise in the system, it meant I had to be louder too. (sigh)
This need for silence and solitude is something I have held onto into my adulthood and I have brought it into my day-to-day business life. While it is incredibly important to me, I have not found the same value of silence being echoed in the greater business community.
Research has proven that I am not alone. It has been determined that too much noise raises cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure. It can contribute to memory loss and insomnia. It raises our collective anxiety levels. It depletes our creativity, impedes productivity, and hinders good decision-making.
So, what would happen if you built more silence into your day? What if you stopped talking long enough to actually hear yourself think? Or turned off the cell phone, shut the laptop, and marinated in your own thoughts for a while?
In addition to your physical well-being, there has been some fascinating research around the importance of silence to learning, to our performance, and even what solitude does for the mind and creativity.
Insight occurs in the space between words. Important conversations require moments of silence during which we can reflect on what someone has said, and consider our responses, before opening our mouths.
This does not mean we adopt the silence of non-participation, of avoiding topics that are uncomfortable. It means that when a question is asked, we give ourselves and others time to reflect and respond.
Noise can be deafening and detrimental to our health, our relationships and our productivity. So pay attention to your own behavior. Are you speaking just to hear yourself speak? Are you getting sucked into the addiction of all of that technology?
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Yes social media and technology has connected us to the world but at what cost? I sit in a room with some of my closest friends and yet we listen to almost nothing each other say, nodding our head as we like and comment on pictures of people we have never met and probably never will. We have lots of connections, but not as much connection.
So as I sat staring at my phone, I just decided to stop. I lifted my head and decided to be present in that moment. I could now hear the barista making the coffee, the sound of cups hitting off the counter, I could smell the food and coffee in the air, the feeling of the chair from under me and a sense of peace, a sense of being. I watched time, take its time.
Don't get me wrong its a real challenge to live in the present and one i constantly battle with. Our attention is never focused on one thing for too long and because of this we have to generalize, delete and distort just to get through our day, this is damaging in itself. But what are we missing amongst this chaos? Are we missing life? Is it just passing us by like a shadow in the night?
So why is silence so deafening? You see if we never give ourselves time for silence we never give our mind time to think, to be still. We are taught from an early age to fear silence, whether that's in the deep of the night or when presenting on a stage, silence echos our deepest fears. Yet think about how many arguments that could have been resolved if we just learned to be silent, took a deep breath and said nothing instead of an emotional outburst in the heat of the moment.
Silence is a beautiful thing it allows you too reflect, connect to the universe, it touches souls, brings you into the present, solves conflict and it gives your mind time to think, rest and be. I am often misunderstood when i just go offline for a day or so. This doesn't mean you just stop working, but you can allocate some time in your day for some silence, go for a walk, have a coffee or just watch the world go by.
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