We Begin To Communicate Before We Open Our Mouths
Wednesdays class with Graham was an interesting experience. The class played a series of theatre games that Graham had led before we ended up working on our lesson plans again. One game was a simplified version of May I? In this game the class stands in a circle and one student initiates the action. To do this a student has to may direct eye contact with another student and show a hand gesture towards the student that indicates that they would like to come over. The student who is being signalled to acknowledges by saying yes and the student who made the gesture then can proceed to walk over. It is then up to the student who said yes to continue the hand gesture to another classmate so on and so forth. During the run of the game classmates would get confused who was looking at who are started to walk without even asking permission and once in awhile there was small confusion. Granted this all took place in a small work space and there were many people involved. But that only stressed the fact that the participants had to be very specific with their eye contact and gesture.
What struck me was that over the last two months our class has been discussing the importance of language. The idea of “bricks” and “mortar” words that will help us communicate our disciplines language to students. But what we need to do os learn to communicate with our students starts even before we open our mouths. If we cannot make direct eye contact and be physically engaged with what we are presenting then we may have already lost the students attention before we begin to speak.