every class has its "talker"

I teach a class on job retention to a different set of 20 - 25 homeless or low income adults each class. Just to let you know, I might refer to them as clients because that's the language we use at the organization.

Today, my class was crazy. At the end, I had a few people shouting out whatever thoughts they had while everyone else was either annoyed by the atmosphere, or tuned out from the entire class. I am convinced that it would have been a very successful class if not for the two "talkers."

Nearly every class has one or two "talkers." What is a talker?

1. An extravert, likes to speaks whatever is on his/her mind often without raising his hand
2. Has an opinion about everything
3. Likes to participate
4. Likes to be the center of attention

So having a talker can either be really awesome, or really not awesome. On the awesome side, having a couple of talkers can really add personality to the class atmosphere and keep things interesting. Whenever I ask the class a question, it's great always being able to call on one of the talkers because they always have an interesting opinion. The issue is when these talkers totally dominate the classroom discussion and discourage others from expressing their thoughts. Even worse is when the talkers start talking about something that's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Here's an example. I asked my class what they would do if their supervisor were to ignore their complaints. While one of my clients was explaining his answer, one of my talkers interrupted and started talking loudly about being at a nightclub and trying to figure out which of the girls were lesbian. I admit it's actually pretty funny writing about it, but at the time I was thinking, "Dude.. what are you talking about..??"

My other talker, who I'll call Brittany, was quite different. She actually typically had very insightful things to say, the only problem is that whenever I would ask the class a question, her hand would shoot up within milliseconds and half the time she would start talking within microseconds, and for a very long time. After the first 3 or 4 times, I was like yeah Brittany really enjoys participating! But then after 7 or 8 times, I was like uhh Brittany is the only person talking (and the other guy I mentioned). So then I stated that I wanted to hear more from the people who haven't spoken, but even then few people raised their hand. I could sense that my other students were discouraged from participating because of Brittany's overwhelming eagerness. Eventually I began hearing grumbles and groans from the other students each time Brittany spoke.

In my psychology class, we learned about a study with two groups of dogs. One group of dogs would get an electric shock, and so they jumped over a fence to a safe zone. The other group of dogs were shocked but were blocked from the safe zone. Later these dogs were given access to the safe zone, but they still didn't jump to the safe zone even when they were shocked. They would just continue to get shocked. This is known as "learned helplessness," which is the phenomenon of an animal or a human being choosing to be helpless even when given the option to help itself.

I think this happened during my class today. My clients chose not to participate because of Brittany's eagerness, even though they know I would have called on them. Now that's a pretty sad situation. So how can I address this problem if it happens again?

I believe that a big part of what happened is totally my fault. I think part of it was that I was perhaps overly fun and enthusiastic to start off with, which may have gotten my clients thinking that they didn't have to take the class that seriously. But I think the biggest reason is that I failed to establish ground rules in the beginning of class. So from now on, these are the rules I need to state after my introduction.

1. Raise your hand to speak. Ideally I would like for my clients to talk whenever they want to contribute because I want my class to be more of a discussion. I also really don't want to treat them like children, but after today's events, I'm going to have to enforce this rule and see if it works well.

2. If you don't raise your hand, we're all going to completely ignore you as if you don't even exist.
This might sound harsh, but I actually think it would be pretty funny and that my students would be down to do this. It's like a deal they're making with each other.

3. We listen to each other with respect.

By establishing these rules, and starting off the class with a more serious tone and later being more fun and enthusiastic once I can see that my clients can handle it, I'm hoping that will help my future classes. Let's see how it goes next time!