Embracing the Silence
This article first appeared in the Teaching Professor on December 17, 2018. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved.
First snowflakes of the season today. Winter is settling in out here in the Pennsylvania countryside. It’s quiet, no birdsongs in the morning, few leaves left on the trees to rustle, and frost muting the crunch of those on the ground. In the woods where I walk, the silence brings everything else into sharper focus.
We don’t always think about silence positively. Visitors sometimes tell us it’s too quiet out here. They feel anxious. Silence can be awkward—we’ve all had those moments of not knowing what to say. It can also feel like an affront. Ask a question in class, hear the silence, and feel a small surge of anger. It’s a confrontation. It’s students’ way of saying that they don’t want to sit at this learning table we’ve so carefully set.
Theresa Mary May was born on October 1, 1956, in Eastbourne, Sussex. She was the one baby of Zaidee Mary, a housewife and Hubert Brasier, a vicar for the Church of England who later turned vicar of Enstone with Heythrop and at last of St Mary’s at Wheatley, to the east of Oxford.