Can you hear me now? (Speaking and Listening)

If you ask anyone if they’ve ever multitasked, they will tell you that they have. Especially teachers! It was interesting to read the research behind multitasking and it’s effect on our focus and productivity. We feel as though we are being more productive when we work on multiple things at the same time; however, we are exhausting ourselves even more so by covering a variety of tasks. During an effective teaching workshop, the speakers specifically said they nobody can multitask and they made a special point to say “the women in here will not like hearing this”. They didn’t go into much detail as to why we cant multitask, so I intrigued and felt it was a bit ironic that this is what the chapter partially covered.  Specifically, multitasking has mental fatigue set in faster. This explains so much. While I’m planning and prepping my lessons, I “multitask” and try to accomplish a multitude of things at the same time. It is certainly exhausting, but I felt at the time that I  was getting more done by taking that approach than I would have if I did one task at a time. Jokes on me. It makes complete sense that if our brain is operating on multiple tasks at the same time, we are thinking about all of the details that go into each of those tasks. Whereas, focusing on one task at a time gives us all the focus to accomplish that one task without the distraction of other things going on. This connects into mindfulness in a way because mindfulness strives on focusing on “the now”. By taking your to do list and focusing on one task at a time, you can set your mind on “the now” of each of those items one at a time while you complete them.

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Hyler and Hicks also talk about the importance of teaching listening and speaking skills to students. I feel like there is more pressure for primary/pre-k/k teachers to teach these skills because the students can continue to develop these skills as they get older. Similarly, if they don’t have these skills in the primary grades, it will be much more difficult for them to  do required speaking and listening tasks in the upper grade levels, high school and beyond. During our effective teaching seminar, one of their motto’s was “if you want something, teach it”. If you want your students to listen well and speak properly, teach them how to do that. This isn’t an easy task. As I reflected on my group, listening is very difficult for students in pre-k. Partially because developmentally some students just aren’t at the school structure mindset yet. With some research, I found this great e-book resource that covers different ways to get students or children to listen. I recommend taking a look at it - definitely worth a read! 

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Additionally, I considered how much of an impact parenting has on students speaking well and listening in school. There is one student in my class that sticks out for this. Since day 1, I never had to worry about her not using her manners or listening to me. I know her family and she comes from very supportive and involved parents. Her grandparents were in education: a principal and a kindergarten teacher. Given this environment and structure growing up, she has been taught to listen, behave properly and follow directions which has carried over to her classroom behavior flawlessly. Do you think there is a line between teaching students how to listen and speak well and parenting?