Quiet time for processing

Sometimes good teaching judgment tells you that you need to simplify to the point where you stop teaching.  You stop the flow of information and maintenance of oversight, and give learners time and space to process for a while what they have been taking in, on their own.

Travel writer Pico Iyer, whose work flings him around the globe, sees quiet and stillness not as the absence of something but as necessary parts of every day and everyone's life.  They allow for a sifting and reckoning of the most important lessons from what we experience:



Susan Cain, another writer and public speaker, author of Quiet, stresses the importance of solitude in giving us time and space, allowing us not only to think but to produce something of our own.


If real learning requires teachers to facilitate and learners to struggle with the real work, time and space must be available for students to prepare mentally for this work.