What if I talk too little? / But I’m too shy to contribute to class discussion!

If you are concerned about participation levels, come talk to me at Office Hours at the beginning of term, and we’ll set up alternative avenues for participation.  You must be proactive and approach me as early as possible; I’ll take the lead from there.  But your verbal contributions to our classes are really, really important — to all of us.

If live discussion utterly petrifies you into silence, then you should not take that disempowering situation as a given, but should rather seek to remedy it, with the help of your professors — either by searching out innovative ways to get your voice heard/included, or by building new confidence — or both. 

Whoever you may be and however you may identify (including any medical issue or disability status or ESL/EFL status!), as a university student you have the right and responsibility to figure out how to get your voice heard and included in real-time, live intellectual discussion (and any institution or paradigm that normalizes the systematic muting and exclusion of university student voices from such discussions — even in the name of accommodating those students’ needs — seems to me to be fundamentally unethical). If you think about it, this is one of the main reasons (however indirectly) that you are at university.

I will do my job and my part in finding ways for your voice to be heard and included. Put me to work. If you think your case is beyond help, try me.

We’ll likely start with the alternative avenues for participation that I make available to all students. From there, mostly in Office Hours, we can proceed through a series of personalized goals or exercises that we can work on together.  For students who feel unable to speak up, I offer optional extra mentorship.  We proceed through an informal program of flexible challenges (“come to class with questions written out; I’ll read them, then and refer to your contributions during discussion”; “raise your hand once, at a time we both plan in advance”).   If in-class participation is daunting to you for any reason (including shyness, anxiety, and/or language skills), I will happily work with you throughout the semester to figure out ways to make it work—and that usually includes working with you to establish long-term and short-term goals that encourage you, at your own pace, to engage in discussion.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to ask how and why your voice has been silenced, rather than accepting your reticence as an inborn trait. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being shy — I’m saying that every voice, however faint, deserves to be heard, and should be heard, and can be heard, with just a little creative thinking.

I believe it is the duty of educators to empower suppressed or underrepresented voices to speak out.  See this entry for more.