Why You’re Already a Teacher
You might be thinking, “I’m not already a teacher – I’m a professional (or entrepreneur)!” Well, I’m going to convince you that you are a teacher, and explain why that’s great and why you should embrace it and learn to do it better. Picture this:
You’re in a conference room with 10 of your colleagues. Sandwiches and Tupperware containers full of yesterday’s leftovers are scattered on the table. People are chatting quietly, but they’re waiting for something. They are waiting for you to start talking.
You’ve agreed to do a brown bag presentation about a project (or new technique, or report summary), and ready or not, it’s go time. You look at your watch. It’s 12 noon so you say, “Well, I guess we should get started,” and turn on your PowerPoint.
Let me give you two different scenarios for what happens next:
Scenario 1: You begin “covering” the bullet points on your first slide, then you move on to the next slide, and cover those points. You describe the photo on the slide, then ask, “Are there any questions?” There aren’t. Your audience looks silently from you to the screen as you resolutely advance from slide to slide, covering bullet point after bullet point.
You look at your audience and wonder if they really want to be there. You’re sure that you don’t want to be there. As you finish the last slide, you ask again, “Are there any questions?” A friend throws one out that seems half-hearted, and the end comes mercifully so you can eat your sandwich.
Scenario 2: You begin your talk with an interesting story about the topic. It’s easy to tell because it’s something that happened to you. People love stories, so your audience is instantly drawn in. You’re not even looking at your PowerPoint, and neither are they. You end the story by asking a question, which several people respond to.
The rest of your presentation flies by as you focus on an easily manageable amount of information. Just three major ideas. Your audience is engaged and asking questions, so the pressure isn’t always on you. You can tell the audience is enjoying it. You are enjoying it. At the end of the talk, everyone thanks you and tells you what a great job you did.
I’m going to give you four easy ways to get closer to Scenario 2. But before I do, I want to say a bit more about why a professional presentation can benefit from the principles of teaching and learning research.
Why Teach?
You might think this kind of research is only for high school teachers. And maybe designing a professional learning experience would require different skills, but that’s not the case. What ties these types of interaction together is simply that one person (I’m calling them the teacher) is taking information from their own brain, and putting it into the brain of someone else.
Why do we want to put that idea in the other person’s mind? Usually it’s because we want the person to change their behavior in some way. Maybe you own a small business and want your employees to complete a task following a certain method. Or you could be a city employee who wants to make sure houses are built to code. You might work for a nonprofit and want people to act more sustainably when it comes to air, water, or wildlife. You could even be a project manager who wants to win a new job from a client.
When you teach, you don’t just want to wow your audience with a flashy presentation. You want them to leave with new information in their brain that allows them to do something differently. (Complete the task accurately, install the right BMPs at their construction site, use less water, or even hire your team for the job).
By using good teaching practices, you can get your message across and improve the chances that the message will stick. This will allow the learner’s behavior to change in a beneficial way.
There is a lot of research on how to teach so that your audience can learn in the most effective way, but to see quick positive results in your presentations, workshops and trainings, start with these four strategies:
1. Set Goals
Decide what you want people to know or be able to do after you talk to them
Before you start writing your presentation, before you even open that PowerPoint file, spend time thinking about the key information or skills that you want your audience to leave with. Limit the number of goals to THREE – yes, just three.
Here’s an example. Let’s say I want to develop a short workshop that teaches people how to become better teachers. My goals might be that participants will:
- Know why being a better teacher can help them reach their professional goals
- Be able to use four different strategies to improve any learning experience they design
- Know where to go to get additional information about being a better teacher
Now it’s easier to structure your content outline, and even your PowerPoint slides, by making sure that each topic you include is related to one of those three goals. If there is information you want to present, but it doesn’t fit with one of your goals, it might belong in a different presentation.
2. Tell a Story
Humans connect and remember through stories
Human brains are hard-wired to love a story. Our species has been using this method of communicating for thousands of years, long before we were writing novels and making Star Wars movies.
Research shows that a good story causes “happiness” chemicals to be released in the bloodstream of listeners. Other research shows that presenting information in the form of a story makes it easier to remember.
Starting a presentation with a story not only hooks the attention of your audience, it gives you an opportunity to start your material with something that will make you comfortable in front of the group. What could be easier than telling a story you know well?
Now, before you start telling the story of the funny thing your dog did this morning, refer back to strategy #1. The story should relate to one of the goals for your learning experience. For example, in my workshop to make people better teachers, I could start by telling a story that helps my audience feel the pain of being a bad teacher, and contrasting it with the pleasure of being a successful teacher.
3. Take Most of the Text out of your Slide Deck
Don’t fall prey to “Death by PowerPoint”
We fill presentation slides with bullet point after bullet point in an effort to be complete and cover our topic thoroughly. We know the audience won’t be able to remember every point, but we will email the presentation to them later so they can use it as a reference. Let me ask you a question.
How many times have you actually gone back to one of those reference presentations to look up information? Do you even know where that file is three months from now when you need the info? It would be better to carefully choose a FEW ideas that your audience will have in their heads when they leave your talk, and can therefore access any time, forever.
In addition to providing more information than people can remember, and failing to guide them to the most important points, bullet point-laden slides cause another problem.
People can’t focus on written text and spoken text at the same time. Therefore, presenting a dense slide, and then verbally “going over” the bullet points, ensures that people will not be paying attention to the most important thing: what you are saying. Much better to put a single image or phrase on the slide, then explain how it relates to what you want them to know.
If you’re worried that you won’t be able to “cover” everything if you do it this way, consider this: is it better to cover three things that everyone in the audience will remember and use, or cover 20 things that nobody will remember or use at all?
4. Stop Talking
Learning works best when activities are varied and participants are involved
Nobody wants to sit and listen to someone talking non-stop for an hour (or more if it’s a longer workshop). And let’s be honest, nobody wants to stand up there and talk nonstop for an hour either! So why do we think that’s the best way for people to learn?
When we pause from the “lecture”, we give people an opportunity to digest what’s being said, and when we facilitate asking questions, or practicing with an example or activity, learners form additional connections in their brain, which reinforces memory.
For example, let’s go back to my workshop teaching people how to become better teachers. After talking about the benefits of coming up with three goals, I could stop for a moment and ask the participants to think about a learning experience they want to create, then jot down what their three goals would be. I wouldn’t have to make it a long exercise – just give them 30 seconds to get it done.
Even this short break and opportunity to try the technique will help cement the idea in participants’ minds so they will remember it later.
The next time you are in a presentation/workshop/training, think about what the learning experience is like. Are you bored and looking at your watch? Or are you engaged, enjoying it, and learning things you will take home with you? I’m willing to bet if it’s the latter, the presenter is practicing some or all of the good teaching strategies we discussed here!