Let’s face it, one of the hardest things for us teachers to do sometimes is to shut up. We can feel the need to keep teaching all the time and somewhere deep in our subconscious we have been led to believe that teaching means talking.
Maybe we don’t realise what we are doing, or we find it hard to resist. We might be waiting for the training that makes us realise it’s okay to be quiet for a while, or we might have a great story we want to share and half way through we realise we’re really going on a bit too much here.
Either way, it’s surprisingly hard and many teachers, I believe, undervalue the importance of silence and quiet in the classroom. So to help you, I’ve made some posters which you can print and pin up in your office, teacher’s room or on the back wall of your classroom* as a reminder that sometimes less is more…
And just to be provocative…
These posters were made with a poster generator to promote the new movie Shut Up and Play The Hits, documenting the farewell performance of the wonderful LCD Soundsystem, the best band of the last thirty years. You can make your own Shut Up posters here, but be warned it’s not always classroom appropriate due to the language employed by other users of the site.
If you think I missed anything, make your own poster and I’ll add it to here.
Here’s one from Vicky Loras:
And one from Phil Longwell:
The Teacher James 