Talking Teachers - A Classroom Survival Guide

By Janet Shell

Talking Teachers is a unique and fascinating guide to using and preserving your voice in the challenging environment of the classroom. Janet Shell, a former teacher and now vocal coach, provides lots of information for the teacher who wants to improve their classroom performance and the book includes many tips and also exercises to try out. She draws extensively on her experience as a professional singer too. This book seeks to bring together the whole experience of being in the classroom. Alongside vocal matters, Janet addresses overall classroom performance and the art of managing people to aid a rounded and personalised experience of being in the classroom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326824327

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Talking Teachers Cover

Talking Teachers

A classroom survival guide by

by Janet Shell

Copyright © 2016 by Janet Shell

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Acknowledgements: I extend my thanks to Dr Rebecca Stone and Christopher Goldsack for proof-reading this book.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN 978-1-326-82432-7

Talking Voice Ltd

41 Newlands Close

Hersham KT12 4PW

United Kingdom

www.talkingvoice.net

FOREWORD

I have written this book for teachers. Whether you are fully qualified or just starting training, I hope you will find something useful here. It is not meant to be a manual about how to teach, rather some thoughts and guidance on what skills are most useful to develop for ‘being’ in the 21st century classroom.

In many ways it is a distillation of my own experience as a teacher and the observations I have made over the years as I have witnessed the changes in the profession.

There is no doubt in my mind that, since my training days, the profession has smartened up! There is much more accountability expected of a teacher, and much greater structure throughout the profession. There is also no doubt that the heart of teaching is currently suffering and that progress, while essential, seems to be taking the teacher away from the very essence of symbiotic communication with the student. With a stricter framework comes more management in every part of the organisation, and the micro-management in the name of efficiency drives ever more complex and convoluted processes.

The big issue that comes up endlessly is that of behaviour management, and there are many measures that teachers are encouraged to take as they learn to address this. Everybody wants the magic formula for instant respect which seems to be the preserve of some, usually senior, staff. I recall somebody asking me for the one thing which would provide instant quiet in the classroom as soon as they appeared! Needless to say, magic ‘tricks’ are illusions, yet to the uninitiated so alluring when viewed in action!

This book is driven by the fact that I don’t believe the nature of human communication has altered one iota! Give a gifted orator a room full of people and something to talk about, and you will witness the ‘magic’ occur without much ‘training’ taking place at all!

There have been many attempts to define the ingredients that make up the charisma of great teachers. This is my attempt and in doing so. I want to thank the innumerable teachers I have encountered who allowed me to blossom as a person. They may have been long term teachers or people who passed through my life all too briefly - sometimes they worked with me to reveal greater depths and showed great patience, other times they provided one or two nuggets that inspired me to find my own way. Every single meeting showed me something about myself and about what it takes to engage with another person. There were some who helped me realise that I did not wish to pursue their particular route. Through those moments I understood more clearly the path I wished to forge. And so it continues because, for me, teaching is as much about learning as it is about sharing what you know.

I started my professional life as a classroom teacher before retraining as a professional singer. I am now particularly interested in how the voice works and how its use can affect ones teaching. I will spend some time explaining how to look after the well-being of this vital tool of the teaching professional.

With my background in secondary education my examples tend to be drawn from that arena. However, many of the ideas can, of course, be transferred and adapted to suit all ages.

I will also clarify that the term ‘vocal folds’ is used alongside the more common ‘vocal cords’. The former is how the medical profession describes the latter. I tend to wander between the two descriptions.

This is written in the spirit of you finding your own voice and using it well and safely with a great awareness of the power we all have to inspire or wound with our choice of words.

1. WHAT MESSAGES ARE WE GIVING OUT?

By our voice and presence, we give out innumerable messages to our students and to our peers every moment of the day. Those messages are mainly unconscious, and until we start to be aware of them, in order to alter what is not working, we are at the mercy of our habitual speech patterns or body language.

In terms of voice, the human is designed to learn by copying. For a baby, the fastest way to learn about speech is by replicating what it hears; to try the sounds and later words, and learn by observing reactions. We don’t give up on that when we are older, although the necessity has long gone. Matching and mimicking remain something we engage with throughout our lives; we just don’t tend to give it much attention once we have learnt what we need. However, the patterns of behaviour remain.

We are programmed to take on board lots of information about people as we listen to them or watch them, and thus we find ourselves as teachers, being scrutinised by our students! If we don’t see this coming, well, it is all too clear what a variety of outcomes may result!

I have identified several different characteristics of voice that I ask participants to look at initially. These are:

TONE: This is to do with the character of the voice. People may mention that you have a strident tone of voice or a calm, reassuring one; they may misinterpret your vocal tone and hear a hidden aggression where there is none. An attractive tone is also one that students are more likely to enjoy listening to, even though they may be unaware of the reason.

PITCH: This is to do with the height of your voice and whether it is in the middle, low or high end of your range. It is worth noticing how your voice reacts under stress and whether you can control this, or even whether you notice it. It can unconsciously reveal quite a lot about your personal state to the students.

SPEED AT WHICH YOU TALK: This is to do with the height of your voice and whether it is in the middle, low or high end of your range. It is worth noticing how your voice reacts under stress and whether you can control this, or even whether you notice it. It can unconsciously reveal quite a lot about your personal state to the students.

VARIETY OF INFLECTION: This relates to how you emphasise certain words, and can make speech much more interesting and intelligible. An uncharacteristic inflection can make speech hard to follow as our ears suddenly pay attention to a sort of vocal hiccup. This particularly affects anybody when speaking a ‘second’ language. For example somebody might pronounce mischievous as MISchievous and somebody else might say misCHIEvous. If you are used to one version, you will be alerted to an alternative. It’s all to do with the expectation of emphasis in any given word, and can also decide whether something is perceived as a statement or a question. The emphasis on different words in a given sentence can alter the meaning entirely. The CAT sat on the mat gives us a different idea from the cat SAT on the mat. While not in itself a major issue, it is enough to distract students in their listening The flow of otherwise excellent talking can be interrupted by the slight change in inflection.

EXPRESSIVENESS: This relates to inflection. It is about speaking with total engagement with the text, seeking to emphasise certain words and spending time on others to give them a bit of life. Reading a story, or even a boring list of things, can be enhanced and enlivened by finding expression within the text to keep the listener’s ear attuned. It has a lot to do with the musicality of the voice and the range of sounds you access when you are being expressive.

PACING: Whether you group your sounds into chunks or whether you run your sentences together is all part of pacing. It includes whether you consciously stop for a moment in your speaking in order to emphasise particular passages, or whether you leave a pause for your listeners to take information on board. People making important speeches will pause after saying something important to allow the listeners to focus on the words last spoken!

CLARITY: Contrary to what people may think, this has nothing to do with accent and everything to do with the impact of consonants and vowel length on speech. As teachers we should have a professional ethic about being role models and being clear in our speaking so there is no confusion. A child who has as yet undiagnosed glue ear for example, will make up what you say in order to remain anonymous and this can lead to many unintentional problems.

VOLUME: Quite simply being aware of the loudness of your speech is something which can help with behaviour management. The more able you are at controlling and altering your volume button, the better you will become at managing behaviour. When I mention volume I am not only thinking of the people who speak too loud but also people who have trouble being loud enough. As a rule of thumb, if your sound is loud in your head, you are on course to be heard! Volume will be influenced by the size of room you are in and how distant your audience is. A master of vocal technique will be able to monitor and change their response to the situation appropriately. It is also worth remembering that if, you are loud, the students don’t have to work at listening. Sometimes it is worth speaking more quietly to encourage them to concentrate.

ENERGY: My final thought for this section is on the delivery of speech and how energetic this is. While it is tempting to believe that passionate and enthusiastic delivery is the gold standard in that it engages students, which it undoubtedly does, in fact this way of teaching can lead to all kinds of problems around behaviour. I have witnessed language teachers, for instance, lose their voices repeatedly owing to them being encouraged to deliver text with massive energy. It can lead to voice strain. Finding the right energy to keep people listening while not hurting yourself in the long term is vital for keeping the voice fit for a long career.

I ask people to reflect on how they communicate NOW, and then how eloquent they would like to be. Becoming aware of how you are seen by others is the very start of change; without that awareness, the process is stifled.

Once it becomes obvious what may need to be changed, then there will be practice and repetition needed in order to achieve the desired outcome. You don’t leave a voice session with a new voice or able to speak confidently if you are a little shy, however, you should have tools to use to improve your voice. With that always comes confidence to try new things out, and thus a new pattern is established.

It isn’t only the voice that gives out messages of course. What you are saying is always underlined by what your body is doing alongside it. Voice and body are inextricably linked, which I think must go back to prehistoric times when language had not yet fully developed. It is much quicker to yell and gesticulate to somebody to move out of the way of that dinosaur heading your way than to yell Hey, you might like to know that you are going to be in big trouble in a few seconds! If you think about it, if I ask you to describe something really small, you will use small gestures and your voice pitch will rise; if I ask you to describe a large object, your gesticulation and voice pitch will alter accordingly.

There has been much written and spoken about body language. If you find yourself stuck or your lessons stilted, it is worth considering whether you tend to stay very still when speaking and avoid using gestures. Particularly noticeable is whether your face is joining in with what you say or whether it remains passive and impenetrable, or even contradictory. Children respond to animation in people. Indeed, we all enjoy being with somebody who seems quite lively. This is not to say that you have to become an overt personality type when you tend towards being more of an introvert. However, you do need to show your passion for whatever you are teaching. Being 100% involved with whatever you are doing is going to be noticed and, conversely, we always spot when somebody is lacking that engagement.

HOW CAN I CHANGE WHAT I DO?

Let me say now that change will have levels of discomfort attached to it. Some of the suggestions I make will need you to go through your comfort barrier. However, keep in mind that the teachers you admire have all done just that. I also believe that some people naturally respond to an ‘audience’ – I am one of those myself – but we can all improve and develop our skills, and in doing so we maintain our own concentration and keep the attention of the students.

YOUR FIRST PRACTICAL CHALLENGE

Using my voice characteristics from