This is the title of a workshop that I have given several times now to groups of English teachers at international events. I usually start the session with a quick energizing game before giving them the following six titles to discuss together before voting on which ones they would most like me to talk about.
- Don’t hold the ball harder than you need to.
- Being a clown is a serious business
- Don’t just do something, stand there!
- Dig the ground before you plant the seeds.
- Take no heroes, only inspiration.
- The perfect event where many things went wrong.
I tell the group that I could talk about these topics for hours and so we have to limit the session to two or three of the six titles. What happens in reality is I talk freely borrowing ideas from different topics until I run out of time. If I am lucky I will have included the topics that most people voted for. This two-part blog is a mini-version of one of those sessions covering a bit from each of the topics.
Don’t Hold The Ball Harder than You Need To
This title comes from an activity that I did once at a physical workshop on body awareness. The leader gave us each a tennis ball and instructed us to carry the ball out in front of us with our hand facing down, so that if we let go of the ball it would fall to the floor. Our only task was to not drop the ball as we walked around. Then the leader stopped us and asked us to think about how hard we were holding the ball. We were all holding our balls far harder than was necessary to prevent the ball from falling. As we relaxed our grips we found that we could use a quarter of the strength and the ball was still in no danger of falling.
In the workshop the point of the exercise was to show how we tend to put unnecessary strain on our bodies. The lesson has stayed with me as a metafor though as we use more effort than is necessary is relation to all kinds of tasks in our lives. In terms of teaching we can think about preparing lessons. Don’t take time doing things that will not effect what your class will actually learn. For example, simple flashcards can be as effective as elaborately designed ones. In our culture working hard is perceived as the greatesst of virtues, but just working hard without that work corresponding to results is not a good thing, it is basically just hurting yourself.
Being A Clown Is A Serious Business
Many years ago I was a health and safety steward in the circus tent at the Glastonbury festival and I got to see all of the acts performing there. Most of them were highly skilled acrobats or jugglers, but one performer did not have any special technical skills and the MC was clearly struggling to know how to introduce him. He eventually found a good way to describe him as – a man who is going to help you to have a good time.
The man’s act started with different famous songs being played over the speakers while he danced around the stage in a fairly ridiculous way stripping off layers of his costume to reveal each time a new outfit that represented the singer of the song being played (Michael Jackson, Freddy Mercury etc). By the end of the opening section he had stripped down to a one-piece pink leotard which made him look genuinely silly. For the rest of the show he got members of the audience come on stage with him and he walked them carefully through a very funny routine.
What does this have to do with teaching? Well, a teacher is responsible for the atmosphere in the classroom just as this performer was responsible for the atmosphere among his audience. He achieved his aims by not taking himself seriously and thereby creating a safe space where audience members felt safe to be on stage with him. It is a difficult thing to have audience members feel comfortable on stage, but he managed it with his good nature and by establishing from the start that it is no big deal if you look a bit silly.
This man was clearly professional in the sense that he knew what he was doing and was very successful in achieving his aim, the aim of entertaining the audience and making them feel safe. This is an unusual way of being professional and one that is good for teachers to bear in mind. Being professional involves knowing what you are doing and achieving your aims, it does not have to involve taking yourself seriously or projecting an image of perfection, I.e. being afraid to make mistakes. For your students to learn they need to feel comfortable with making mistakes. How can you create an atmosphere in your classroom where your students feel safe and free to make mistakes if you yourself are not comfortable with making mistakes?
Slow is good (an extra one).
When I am teaching presentation skills to students and especially when I am helping them to stage scenes I emphasize over and over that they should not rush and speak or move too quickly, slow is good. When teacher-training I further emphasize that silence has a very important role to play in the classroom. Underneath this is what I feel to be an important principle of communication, if you believe in what you are saying then do your best to deliver that message as clearly as possible. That will usually involve being slow rather than fast and putting in pauses to let the audience digest what has just been said before movong on to the next part. If I see a speaker or performer delivering their material too quickly, or trying to draw attention on themselves and be ‘interesting’, I lose trust in them and feel that they do not themselves really trust what they are saying.
When the former American president Barack Obama spoke to audiences, he would speak extremely slowly and deliberately, pausing after each phrase. This was exaggerated but effective. He developed his arguements slowly and made sure that everybody could follow him step by step. It gave a feeling of solidity to his arguements a feeling that he trusted what he was saying. It is important for both performers and teachers to show that they trust their material, because the material should be the main thing, they are simply a bridge to help the material get to the audience/the class.
Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!
It is also important for teachers to understand the value of silence. It is easy for teachers under the pressure of getting through a sylabus with a limited number of teaching hours to try to cram as much material into each lesson as possible, but this is rarely effective. Just as a poster that has too much information on it is difficult to read, so a lesson that has too much content in it is difficult to follow and learn from.
Sometimes students are given a task and they need a good amount of time to think about it and act on it. In these situations the best thing that a teacher can do is to keep quiet and leave them alone. Silent mime-based activities can also be extremely powerful. If students are given a role-play situation, it is a good move to start by having them mime the situation out with big gestures and no words, before they are allowed to speak. Doing this helps the students to become emotionally connected to the situation as they act it out physically. Also, the act of trying to communicate without words is frustrating so when students are finally allowed to act the situation out with words, the words are welcome, they become a valued part of a communication process. The use of silence helps to make the use of words more meaningful and memorable.
Recap of Part 1
So far this discussion has spawned the following advice …… don’t work too hard, don’t take yourself seriously, be slow, and don’t be afraid to be quiet in the classroom. The second part of this blog article will contain such gems as don’t plan your lessons too much and don’t think in the classroom!
