It's Not All in the Delivery

a trip down to Denver to observe an few hours in the lives of real Corps members

Visiting North High today made me a little nervous. Can I offer these kids what they need and deserve? Am I even in the position to be calling them “kids”?! Aren’t I only 21 years old anyway?! One class in particular made me worried. I spoke with the teacher for few minutes before her class started to trickle in. The teacher had a lot of vigor and spoke like she was compelling her immediate thoughts into quick language, injecting her comments into our conversation without hesitation. Yet, she was also the conversationalist who is so eager to put a thought into words that the listener is unconvinced that her meaning has as much resilience as the tone would suggest. She was just exporting ideas, not conveying them. I worry that I converse like this teacher. I want to provide big, discernible handles on my contributions so they are easy to grasp and hold; however, this means I can stray from my message for the sake of facilitating the interaction. I tend to speak to serve the conversation rather than converse to serve the idea.

I watched this communication tendency play out in the classroom. It played poorly. That means it could play poorly for me too. She was empathic and loud; her pitch was moderately varied and her pace brisk. Yet with all that, she still wasn’t invigorating. For all the force and oomph in her style, she lacked the discernible substance. She was all trappings, no message. She was just accessorized language. So, naturally, she failed to hold her students’ attention. They didn't sense a message or lesson behind the words. They wandered between the tables, talked incessantly, and cracked jokes that must have been hysterical, given their boisterous, overblown laughter.

She relied blindly on what she had probably been told her whole life were her good public speaking skills. Teaching must be much more than public speaking. To teach a lesson is not to give a presentation. My time in her class today told me that words alone don't transport a lesson. A teacher must use all sorts of vehicles. No amount of oratorical wizardry is going to make a lecture stick. I will have to learn to get beyond the lecture (even though I feel most capable in that format) and teach. I will have to teach.

How do I do that?