Last Saturday at Sabbath School I was not in charge of teaching the lesson so I had the opportunity to “observe” another teacher’s presentation.
I’ve seen Teacher G on bad and good days. On bad days, he’s arrived late, or started off by apologizing for not having prepared the presentation (because he’d forgotten or hadn’t had time), but I will have to say last Saturday it was a great day for him. Like me, Teacher G is not a native English speaker, actually first he was a Math teacher but for reasons I’m not familiar with he decided to become a language teacher.
My piece of advice:
When you’re presenting something to 60 – 80 people you’d better prepare ahead.
The title of his lesson was “What you get is not what you see” dealing with perception and reality. Teacher G took great advantage of his powerpoint presentation, choosing images to assist him in conveying the idea.
If you have already prepared a PPT presentation you are quite aware it is not an easy task. It’s not just “throw in” a few paragraphs of your talk and that’s it.
1. Introduction:
Teacher G used images from a movie – Shallow Hal (which students had seen and could identify with).
2. Teaser
By showing 3 similar “disaster pictures” and one luxury swimming pool he led students to choose the easiest answer – thus emphasizing – perception over reality – all the pictures were actually related to deaths – with the swimming pool leading in the number of casualties in a year.
3. Delivery
4. Conclusion – and practical application
In 25 minutes, the teacher was able to present a great talk on the opportun
ities we have to develop critical thinking, not to judge a book based on its cover, not to be prevented from doing things because of “prejudgment”. And all of that in a highly heterogeneous group of people in terms of age, education and language fluency.
All of that supported by his preparation. He didn’t walk in rushing fearing he was late, carefully selected images and number of slides.
His preparation made all the difference.
Cheers
Mo
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