Irina Starovoytova's Blog

I think this is a fairly typical situation. the same happens in the classroom sometimes, but there we as teachers can ask students to participate, and we can even insist.

There may be several explanations for this situation with teachers' workshops:

1. Some people are good visual or audial learners, and, unlike kynesthetic ones, and they do not feel the need to move or say anything.

2. Some teachers view such workshops as a good opportunity to relax after a long working day and that's why they prefer to sit quietly in the corner near the radiator.

3. Some teachers just feel shy to speak out in public. Yes, surprisingly, this happens quite a lot: we are so used to speaking in our typical and habitual classroom environment that in a different situation we are apprehensive of making a mistake or say something uninteresting for other participants.

4. Some teachers understand learning as listening and absorbing information rather than participating in group work or some other kinds of activities. Therefore they just don't feel there's a need to do anything other than listen.

5. And, finally, if a workshop is free and no fees are charged, it is often treated as something not very important. We tend to work more if we pay for the experience, even if the fee is only symbolic. In such cases some "moral" fee like a need to register and the knowledge that the number of seats is very limited, sometimes helps.