Becoming a Student, or--What Did I Teach Them to Do?

Last year, Hackney and I really thought we were on to something as we taught presentation skills: we watched Steve Jobs videos; we made the students practice with metaphors as visuals; we limited them to just a handful of words on a slide; we sent them up there without notes.

Cut to September 19th. Hackney and I were to present to our peers at Joliet Junior College's "Bridging the Gap" workshop, detailing what college professors needed to know about the Common Core State Standards, and explaining what high school teachers needed to know about college expectations. We decided to focus on writing. We also started to fall back on what was comfortable for a presenter: slides with text that would guide our presentation. Hadn't we warned our students about that?
As we created the PowerPoint,  I know we both felt that twinge of guilt as slide 2 gave way to slide 7...gave way to 10...and so on. We ended up with 17 slides for a 40-minute presentation. To our credit, one was a title slide, one had our contact info, and one made an effort to establish our credibility. That's 14 body slides. Not a ton, but surely we could have done away with a few.

We began our presentation--no notes, mind you--and had gone through 8 slides in about 6 minutes. Then, in a moment of telepathic empathy, we slowed down, took some questions, and all was right with the world. We were just two teachers talking about what we knew, what our students could do, and what we hoped they could do soon. The questions from the audience of 25 high school and college teachers put us at ease. I think I taught that concept once: "When you know what you're talking about, you don't need too many slides."

Our 40 minutes wound to a close, and I think we both felt it went well. When I look back on what we had, I can excuse a few more slides aside from the 3 I explained away earlier. We had a video of student feedback--worth it, I think. But could we have used metaphors for the CCSS we discussed? Could we have just shown student work without a slide explaining it? Maybe. Did we feel safer with the slides to support our points? Certainly.

In one sense there are times when we'll become the students we're teaching, and in another sense, I think it's safe to say that it's important that we are always students. There's a lot we have to learn.