Cacophony of Voices

Things were going well…maybe a little bit too well. Each time one student spoke, everyone else wanted to jump in. Over and over again, the same thing—one student spoke, then everyone tried to jump in at the same time. They were so passionate, but they couldn’t actually hear each other because of the chaos that was happening after each comment. 

I was excited! Finally my students were so into the discussion that they literally could not contain themselves. At the same time, I believed it was my responsibility to establish and maintain a functional classroom where students could engage in discussions respectfully and actually listen to each other. Yet, I also believed that I needed to let students handle situations that come up during the discussion first, and only step in as a last resort to ensure the discussions can continue. 

Discussions are at their best when students develop a natural flow amongst themselves, and I know that sometimes that can feel a little chaotic for me as the teacher. I thought about letting the class continue to figure out how they are going to handle the situation and who should speak next. Since there was a student discussion leader, I also thought about urging them to make a decision about how they want to decide who should speak next. But, I wondered if maybe things had gone too far? Did I just need to jump in and sort things out? However, if I did jump in, I knew it might take away from the agency and enthusiasm that students were clearly feeling. I wasn’t sure how to proceed.