Teaching an Art

Today I had two military recruiters provide a guest lecture to my students and I am struck by something. I am putting the finishing touches on a long multipart discussion of the wave of new teacher evaluation systems making their way across the nation, but I was struck by two recurring things.

First, as I watch these two recruiters present, provided with all sorts of tools and time, and enhanced by having presented the same presentation over and over again, to similar groups of students each time, I am struck by how awful it is. Any comedian will tell you, you have to work the room and know your crowd. A room full of suckers can easily be lead, you don't have to know what you are talking about, you have to know your room full of suckers. I have taught for years, but capturing the room and working the room is essential to teaching.

Let's face it, we are con artists. We bait and switch, we deceive, we commit slight of hand, we exaggerate, we amplify. Teaching requires a working knowledge of the group in front of us. Even if you don't know them as individuals, you have to know them as people. Watching these two present, reminds me that good teaching, requires that you capture the room.

How do evaluation programs rate the ability of a teacher to capture the room? So far, what I've seen doesn't ever look at the essence of teaching. You can get your group to be quite, but I don't know if you can get them to listen. I watch these two presenters fumble through the room, ask questions to dead silence, and crack jokes that solicit no laughs.

This is essentially the problem at hand, how do you measure something that is so elusive as presence. When I was still training to be a teacher, we called it 'withitness' but withitness is your ability to perceive the emotional heartbeat in the room while witnessing the plethora of activity taking place under the surface around the room. Presence, is more than withitness, its about thane 'withitness' while also having captured the room; moved the class from staring, to listening, to actually hearing what you have to say. Knowing your crowd in such a way that you capture them personally, and maintain them indefinitely.