Conquer short attention spans...part 2

“A good teacher, like a good entertainer, first must hold his audience’s attention.   
Then he can teach his lesson.”
Hendrik John Clark

 

I was so curious about what I was learning as an actor with an audience of children that I began to consider going back to the high school classroom. As an entrepreneur at heart, I was also taking some high-powered business seminars from some very well-known and respected speakers. They changed what was happening in their seminars fairly frequently as well, working to keep the attention of the thousands of business people who paid a great deal of money to attend. I remember thinking that these speakers knew some secrets about how to present effectively, strategies I hadn’t learned as a teacher. They had to be good at holding the audience’s attention because if they weren’t, they were out of business.

I was fortunate enough to be able to return to the classroom where I had the opportunity to test out these new theories. Limiting the activity – whether it was lecturing, a game, some written work – to twenty minute intervals was an effective strategy for keeping the attention and interest of teens that are exposed to a multitude of distracting influences.

How do we know when we’re nearing the time to change what we’re doing? All we have to do is glance at them, check if they’re beginning to glaze over. If they are, it’s time to switch the teaching mode or maybe even dig into our bag of tricks for another way to reach them. Even just a short shift in what’s happening can make a huge difference.