How We Can Help Our Students Who Feel Invisible

In our classrooms, we can see the students who are probably feeling invisible. They are the ones not greeted by others students who look past them and start talking to more familiar friends. Or the ones overlooked when their classmates are told to find a partner for an activity. Or the ones who sit silently seemingly unnoticed during group discussions.

One young man described it this way, “The problem is that to many people, I am simply invisible. Nobody says ‘hello’ to me. Nobody nods to me. Nobody recognizes me as a person with something to say. Nobody listens to me. People make assumptions about me … But I am a person and have something to say — both as an individual and on the basis of my distinctive experience.” (No longer bystanders, Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 10, 2016.)

In the documentary, Becoming, Michele Obama is asked about feeling invisible. She responded by saying, “We can’t afford to wait for the world to be equal to start feeling seen…. You’ve got to find the tools within yourself to feel visible, and to be heard, and to use your voice.”

I’ve often wondered how anyone can find those tools within themselves. Then one day, I inadvertently discovered how we teachers can present an opportunity for students to do this.

It happened during a teaching-methods course I was teaching at a university, and the lesson involved two “active listening” techniques. (See “Want Your Students to Seem More Likeable? Research Tells Us How.”) These are techniques that their future ESL students could use to develop their conversation skills. Instead of just describing these techniques, I decided it would be most effective to have these future teachers about 10 minutes actually experiencing the activity just as English language learners would.

I first put them in pairs. The two partners were given different lists of questions about everyday topics, for example
• Did you send an email or text anyone today?
• Recently, what are you most worried about?
• What were you doing a year ago?
• How many members are there in your family?

Before the pairs started to talk about the questions, I modeled the active listening activity, which involves asking follow-up questions and responding with rejoinders (e.g. I see / Really? / Great!). The model looked something like this:

Question: Do you like to exercise?
Response: Yes, I like to run.
Rejoinder & follow-up question: Cool! Where do you like to run?
Response: There is a great trail around the lake and another through 100-Acre Woods.
(Option: The conversation can continue with rejoinders and follow-up questions or change to a different question.)

The effect on all students: invisible and visible

I had planned to have them change partners after 5 minutes and finish the activity after 10. However, I couldn’t get them to stop talking. (After 15 minutes, I actually had to turn off the lights in order to get their attention.) For the first time that term, I noticed that the more passive (invisible?) students actively engaging with classmates. Also, the more typically outgoing students seemed genuinely interested in what their partners had to say.

Although the activity was a kind of “set up,” these students were taking it to a level of involvement beyond just experiencing ESL conversation techniques. The “invisible” students seemed to be taking advantage of an opportunity to apply the “active listening” tools that they had within themselves to engage with others.

Furthermore, I noticed more interactions between the previously “invisible” students and others as they were leaving class, and impressively, before the next class. It seemed that they may have recognized that by showing an interest in others through active listening, people will respond in kind.

This activity had a similar result in a completely different context. At a teachers’ conference, I presented this technique and randomly matched each audience member with someone (whom they probably had never met before). Once again, I couldn’t get them to stop talking. At the end of the session, one of the participants told me, “I wish my husband, teenage son and in-laws would use these two techniques.”

After seeing the effect this activity had on the class dynamics and especially on the more passive students, I started including it early in the terms of other courses and have found similar positive results.

As Michele Obama said, “We can’t afford to wait for the world to be equal to start feeling seen.” For students who are feeling invisible around other people, instead of silently waiting for someone to notice them, they can try to interact with others by asking questions and follow-up question, and by responding with rejoinders. We teachers can help them discover these tools that they have inside themselves.