Which admittedly doesn’t answer how one does prepare to stand up in front of 38 eager faces ready to lap up all the knowledge one can offer without ‘rehearsing’ and the it just may be that teaching involves a calculation of effect. Only, responsive/listening too. And because most of my more pedagogic experiences in the last five years have been musical, one-on-one, my view are all highly suspect. I like the easy metaphor, you know?

I carry a story of myself as NOT a good listener, which could use some revision maybe. I watch my kids not apparently absorbing all of the things the violin teacher is trying to impart, not giving all of the lovely social cues of nodding and making eye contact, and still, the stuff he says comes out over the following week. I think sometimes in conversation the jumble of ideas drowns out the other person’s voice, and that’s why I have the replay go for hours, and keep friends who understand when I call back hours later and say, “Wait, I just heard what you said, and what I want to say is…” Sometimes I wonder if this was a damage inflicted on us all by the Great Books place where you had to listen for that opening where you could jump in…

1. Speaking from the heart (dropping down into feelings, not just rationalizing your argument etc.)
2. Listening from the heart (not planning how you’ll respond/what you’ll contribute)
3. Speaking with concision (coming to essence)
4. Speaking spontaneously—again with the not rehearsing/performing.

(Not a bad explanation at: http://www.talkingleaves.org/node/139)

I’ve done this for hours at Chez Zen, with people with whom I’m arguing, or with the community as a group. Talking piece and everything! Yeah, I know. When you put it with NVC, though, it’s a powerful way to move through conflicts, if the other person knows how to/is willing to play along.

Of course these guidelines are basically impossible, anyway for those of us who premeditate making breakfast in the morning. (Lying in bed cosy and immobile: first I’ll pour a cup of water in the pan. Then I’ll light the fire. Then I’ll get out the cream of rice….etc.) But great anguishing fun to practice!

It really wouldn’t hurt to try some of this during End of the World Class, since I’ve begun feeling that my “listening face” is so fake,—really I’m just waiting for the incoherently burbling student to stop talking so I can hastily reframe what s/he said and then make the point *I* was trying to make all along. Since my point is of course SO much more interesting. SUGH.

Well hey, I get to practice exactly this every M/W from 3:30-4:45! SIGH. Though I just typed SUGH and that might be more what it sounds/looks like.

Patrick, something something something thank you (to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas, right?)

I sometimes think of the bell curve and how neither the worst nor the best of what I think of myself tends to be true, but that’s almost worse, my inner drama queen cries, because at least the extremes would be a sort of noticeable mattering. I have from my journals at fifteen some glibness about wanting to be unique, just like everyone else.

I haven’t figured out the performing thing, whether it must necessarily include a distancing. I can think of teachers I adored but the performance was so ingrained that there was a sort of hearty bluffing thing when you were one-on-one that was grotesque as stage make-up is when you are face to face with the actor. And yet, and yet, and yet. We are performing animals, and I love a performance.

Also I am so worried myself, chronically, about teaching qua performing and the similar dread on waking/doing dishes/pausing, the whole oh-no-why-did-I-say-THAT thing, so much fear that I didn’t listen, wasn’t responsive, was too busy projecting my great funny coolness out into the classroom. UGH. Alors—to school!