I hate speaking off the cuff, especially in front of a group of people. I even hate doing it at times in conversations with someone. I often feel like I’m writing my sentences in my mind before they come out of my mouth, and sometimes the process is choppy. It’s worse if I have to speak in front of a class, because I’m caught up with processing what I have to say in front of everyone, including all my ums, dead end thoughts, and trailing off, which is the sonic equivalent of the ellipses.
I’ve been guilty of speaking off the cuff a lot to classrooms over the past few years. Obviously, preparation is the solution, but it was a matter of time, or that I was too busy, etc. It’s easy to do when there are several classes. However, lack of preparation makes for a trainwreck. And bad communication.
Last week, I made a script for my second day of class for the summer. I made notes on the reading assignment, wrote down what the students essentially needed to know about the text, and even threw in my talking points. Even if it took several hours of my time to prepare, I had a much smoother class session. It was much better than if I took it for granted that I read the story a few times and tried to get class participation out of them. Even if last week’s lesson wasn’t perfect, I was communicating and the students were. Also, I didn’t feel as drained as I would on unprepared classroom sessions.
I wish I could just talk without the pre-written stuff. I envy the people who can really hold their own without the notes and who don’t have to mentally write their sentences. Then again, I can spell and I know my punctuation. I can apply this type of approach of writing before I speak to other things, especially if I am speaking before any kind of audience. For video or podcast, I can write. All I need to do if fine tune it so it doesn’t take so much time to do. For notes I make now, I can always re-use and revise, but creating new stuff is where the challenge is.
Tags: public speaking, teaching moments
