A while back Seth Godin wrote a great post, Talker's Block. That post served to inspire my own writing as well as the teaching of writing to my elementary school students. Now as Godin suggests in his post, I can write as fast as I talk due to the practice and time I've given the medium.
Today as I watched Eric Sheninger's dynamic Ted Talk, I thought of the idea "Speaker's Block," which is the inability to speak with ease and comfort. I have speaker's block. Like so many, and unlike Sheninger, I don't have the ability to get up in front of a crowd and speak with ease.
There's many reasons for that.
First, as a woman, I fear the comments--comments about my size, clothes, appearance, and presentation. Women are often scrutinized and ridiculed about their appearance so it takes twice as much courage and gumption to get up and speak as a woman if you don't look like Giselle or have the education and experience of Michelle Obama. It's such a grave injustice, and I believe a reason for the gender gap is that woman are often first judged by their physicality rather than their ideas, leadership, experience or other factors.
Next, I simply haven't had the practice with speaking to a crowd. I've only presented to a crowd a small number of times, and have never studied or practiced the medium with any strength or commitment.
With all this in mind, and with the success I've gained since reading Godin's "Talker's Block" post, I'm ready to meet this challenge.
I'll start by working on the challenge with my students. I'll create a short "Ted Talk" about the solar system--an upcoming unit of study, and then for our study of this curriculum unit I'll have students create similar talks about a topic related to space and the solar system. This will give every child a chance to try out this medium.
As Godin and so many others demonstrate, we won't learn these mediums without practice, and there's no better time than the present to tackle yet another challenge.
