How Teachers Can Help ‘Quiet Kids’ Tap Their Superpowers

When Lily Shum was little, she dreaded speaking up in class. It wasn't because she didn't have anything interesting to say, or because she wasn't paying attention or didn't know the answer. She was just quiet.

"Every single report card that I ever had says, 'Lily needs to talk more. She is too quiet,' " recalls Shum, now an assistant director at Trevor Day School in Manhattan.

She doesn't want her students to feel the pressure to speak up that she felt.

That's why she joined more than 60 educators in New York City recently at the Quiet Summer Institute. The professional development workshop was based on Susan Cain's best-seller Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.

The book has been a national phenomenon, and it's the inspiration behind a curriculum developed by Heidi Kasevich for teachers.

"It was a lens through which I could view my entire life, and really feel the license to be myself," says Kasevich, a teacher for more than 20 years who now works for the company Cain co-founded to promote the book's message about introverts.

This training workshop uses this book — and Cain's latest book written for middle-schoolers — to help teachers notice, and serve, those quiet kids.

"There are expectations on our kids to ... be a charismatic extrovert," says Kasevich. Even if it's unconsciously, she says, teachers tend to give more attention to the louder students.

Kasevich admits she did it too: calling on the kids who raised their hands first.

The two-day course started with reimagining class participation, which in some schools can count for a big portion of students' grades. Kasevich would prefer it be called classroom engagement.

Read more at source: How Teachers Can Help 'Quiet Kids' Tap Their Superpowers : NPR Ed : NPR