Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Introversion, Addendum

Just a few brief additional thoughts to yesterday's post.

It's interesting to delve into personality types, isn't it? I have actually requested that the library reserve a copy of Laney's The Introvert Advantage for me. I don't expect it to appear anytime soon, for I'm 40th in line, but there is more than one copy in circulation, so it might not be too long either.

One thing that I didn't mention in the previous post about introversion was that they claimed that this was something that is hard-wired into us. It has to do with the construction of the brain, as I understand it. I had always thought that these sorts of things had more to do with nurture than nature, but it seems that I was wrong. I would think it likely, however, that nurture could certainly modify one's degree of introversion — or any other personality trait for that matter.

When I ponder my days of teaching and how much I enjoyed teaching English, I can see how personality may have come into play. Whether you discuss Shakespeare or a novel or a poem, there is always room for interpretation and the sharing of thoughts and ideas. As an introvert, I was quite happy to hear what the kids thought of this or that, and, as most of them were extroverts (apparently), I'm sure that many of them were pleased with the opportunity to voice their opinions. My other subject, geography, was more of a tell it type of subject, so it was probably less of a natural fit for both teacher and many students.