Talking and Meaning

A couple of things happened today that reminded me the critical role that talk plays in our understanding of our complicated world. The first conversation was at work. 

I was meeting with a bunch of colleagues and Frank, my boss, posed a challenging problem for us all to grapple with. Each person in the room came to the meeting with a preconceived notion about what the "right" answer was. What we discovered, however, was that once we started talking, each of us had a slightly different take on the issue. It was only through lots of back and forth that we were able to come to some satisfactory consensus. This happens all of the time. I am not sure why it stuck out today. But it always amazes me how my thinking shifts and gets stronger when I bounce ideas off of others. Our collective thinking is so much more powerful than when we do it alone. I was reminded of this in another way when I got home from work.

Just before bedtime, my daughter Karina was reading Patricia MacLachlan's chapter book Caleb's Story.  At the end of her reading she was supposed to write down some of the big ideas from the pages she read. (This was a part of her homework - not something her crazy educator parents make her do...) It was late. She was tired. This was the last thing she wanted to do. She stared at her binder. 

"I don't know what to write," she said.

"Don't worry about writing," I countered, "I have not read this story yet. Just tell me what happened so far."

She began to give me a quick synopsis. She talked about a few of the events that happened. As she continued talking you could see a change come over her face.   She started to sit up. She got more and more animated.

"You know," she said. I think the old man, the mysterious man, the one they thought was a ghost, but turned out to be real. I think he is Caleb's grandfather.

"How do you know that? I said.

"Well, I don't know for sure, but now that I think about it a bit. There are a few clues there."  

Her voice trailed off and she then quickly picked up her pencil and wrote in a few key ideas she was mulling over.

Talk is like this. We don't know what we we really think until we have to share it with another person. All Karina needed was to talk for a bit. Then ideas flooded her mind. Earlier today, back in my office, all my colleagues and I needed was some time to share different points of view. Time to refine and grow our ideas. 

Sometimes we get so busy we forget that we can't just move from activity to activity or from meeting to meeting. We need time to interact, to talk, to think together. Our classrooms and our workplace are similar in that way. Both rely on conversation to feed the thinking that needs to get done.

Sometimes it's good to be reminded of this.