Interruptions
and Disruptions
I am thinking as my thoughts are
interrupted by constant talking—a monologue of how to teach that never stops—about
how my students value or devalue the noise spaces in my classroom. I am thinking particularly of a student last
year who always wanted the classroom door shut during a test because even one
student casually walking down the hall would distract her from her task. My claustrophobia had always demanded that
the classroom door remain open and it took me a while to get over that
closed-in feeling. I have other students
who ask to use earbuds or headphones during writing and reading
assignments. I have always said no
because I think they need to have some time without their thinking disrupted by
an outside source. Nicholas Carr in his
book The Shallows argues that
prisoners in Abu Grahib were subjected to constant loud music and noise to
disrupt their thinking. For me, Carr
validated my idea that noise is a disruption.
I open every creative writing
class with a 15-mimute freewrite and I play music—piano solos and such—while
they are writing. This has been so much
of my routine for so many years that I often don’t hear the music. But I’m wondering if that music disturbed the
girl who had to shut the door to take a test.
And what does that do for the kids that don’t like music or don’t like
my choice of music? If I let myself worry
too much about this I will never do anything in my classroom because I will
overthink it all. But I do need to be
mindful of others. I am wondering about
how to balance that out so that all my students are accommodated.
I could let this lead to other
areas as well, such as group work, class response time, requiring blogs and
other social media participation. But I
am going to stay with the noise thing for now because that’s brought on this
post. What causes some of us to need
noise and some of us to not need noise? For instance, I was in a space where
one person started to talk and continued to talk until it became a kind of
white noise that drove me nuts. It
interrupted my thinking to the point that I had to leave the room. I was not listening to what was being said—can’t
remember the specifics at all, but do remember the constant monotone that
droned on and on and on.
So why can’t I shut out the other
noises? Is it because I want to hear everything around me? Or is it that I am secretly searching for a distraction so I won't have to go to the dreaded writing task and attend to matters such as actually finishing a piece of writing? I think it's both--but mostly a frustration with my writing--not liking the messy first drafts and not liking what I know is a long and arduous road to the finished product. It's that old thing about as long as I don't start the project it is still that perfect dream.
