So I’ve had a rather nasty bout of hayfever for the last week or so, and today, my voice was hoarse, my throat was sore, and in general, I felt pretty crappy. I actually missed school yesterday in order to go to the clinic, since I wasn’t quite sure that I didn’t have strep throat, but it turned out to just be a particularly nasty case of post-nasal-drip. Yeeeach. So my 5th graders had class today, and our topic was “Can you play ______”, with various sports being the vocabulary to use. So how do you teach a rather simple lesson with potentially uninteresting vocabulary to a group of 5th graders when you’re feeling under the weather? Enthusiastically. “Fake it if you can’t make it.” Get your game face on!
So I start the lesson with my usual greeting, make a brief mention that my hayfever has made my voice sound weird, and then proceeded on with the lesson as though it was the most fun I’d had all day. The kids realize that I’m over-playing it – they’re not dumb. But they also realize that the sub-text here is “I’ll make this as fun as I possibly can, if you agree to try to have fun too.”
I smile a lot – in fact, I try to be smiling or at least have a “pleasant” expression on my face at all times. If we hit an activity where I’m just overseeing the kids doing stuff on their own, I walk around, pay complements, exchange high-fives, and try to keep things positive. When I explain activities, lead demonstrations, or set-up for a game, I try to be as animated as possible – being animated and almost cartoonish not only helps to keep the kids interested, but different voices, expressions, posture, etc. can help make an explanation clearer if I’m pretending to be, for example, both halves in a conversational exchange.
All of this is to say that I try really hard to show that I “care” about the lesson I’m teaching by trying to look like I’m having as much fun as I want the kids to have. The best game in the world is going to seem boring if you have some sad-sack with a head-cold telling you how to play, but just like those old toy commercials where they show kids having a suspicious amount of fun relative to what the toys actually are, if you explain tic-tac-toe in an engaging, funny, and exciting way, you may just be able to hook your audience (and thus trick them into learning).
Enthusiasm, like strep throat, is contagious. And thankfully I only have one of those things, according to my doctor.
Vomix 