I think I mentioned this before but I was a national speech and debate octafinalist in high school and I was able to parlay that into a job running a debate program at an ambitious charter middle school in college.
My approach was the exact opposite of this. Like half the kids were TERRIFIED of public speaking and were only doing it because their tiger moms insisted they had to (and the other half LOVED the attention).
I had a lot of trouble getting the scared kids to open up and one day I asked one of the youngest ones what made her so afraid of speaking in front of the class, especially since they were all her friends.
And she told me she was afraid she’d say something dumb or make a mistake and everyone would make fun of her. And that they’d laugh and laugh at her if she froze up.
The next day I asked the class if anyone was scared of being made fun of and all the shy kids raised their hands.
Now I don’t actually know if this is the same pathology in adults with fear of public speaking but I suspect it’s similar, and now I’ll get to how I addressed it which worked fabulously.
First I told them that this was a ridiculous fear and that no one would make fun of them. But of course that doesn’t do anything lol. But then I told everyone to rip out 10 pieces of paper from their notebooks and crumple them up.
And I told them I was going to give a speech. I told them if I said “uhh” or “um” or used any filler words they were to throw a paper ball at me and shout “shame!” 3 times pointing at me.
And I gave a terrible speech. And they loved it! It was so much fun for them.
But then! I had the students give speeches with the same rules, starting with the confident ones.
After the third student the shy ones were volunteering.
After the lesson I explained to them that we had accomplished 2 things:
1. We had demonstrated how absurd such a reaction really is, because none of them would have ever reacted in that way if they weren’t specifically asked to, and none of them had any actual malice even when they did shout “shame” at their classmates
2. Everyone had experienced the comically worst case scenario imaginable of public speaking and survived!
So they became the rule during EVERY class and I was told by the other teachers that my shy students had started leading presentations and speaking up in class and some of them asked me how I worked with them.
They were HORRIFIED when I told them lol.
But it worked!
My approach was the exact opposite of this. Like half the kids were TERRIFIED of public speaking and were only doing it because their tiger moms insisted they had to (and the other half LOVED the attention).
I had a lot of trouble getting the scared kids to open up and one day I asked one of the youngest ones what made her so afraid of speaking in front of the class, especially since they were all her friends.
And she told me she was afraid she’d say something dumb or make a mistake and everyone would make fun of her. And that they’d laugh and laugh at her if she froze up.
The next day I asked the class if anyone was scared of being made fun of and all the shy kids raised their hands.
Now I don’t actually know if this is the same pathology in adults with fear of public speaking but I suspect it’s similar, and now I’ll get to how I addressed it which worked fabulously.
First I told them that this was a ridiculous fear and that no one would make fun of them. But of course that doesn’t do anything lol. But then I told everyone to rip out 10 pieces of paper from their notebooks and crumple them up.
And I told them I was going to give a speech. I told them if I said “uhh” or “um” or used any filler words they were to throw a paper ball at me and shout “shame!” 3 times pointing at me.
And I gave a terrible speech. And they loved it! It was so much fun for them.
But then! I had the students give speeches with the same rules, starting with the confident ones.
After the third student the shy ones were volunteering.
After the lesson I explained to them that we had accomplished 2 things:
1. We had demonstrated how absurd such a reaction really is, because none of them would have ever reacted in that way if they weren’t specifically asked to, and none of them had any actual malice even when they did shout “shame” at their classmates
2. Everyone had experienced the comically worst case scenario imaginable of public speaking and survived!
So they became the rule during EVERY class and I was told by the other teachers that my shy students had started leading presentations and speaking up in class and some of them asked me how I worked with them.
They were HORRIFIED when I told them lol.
But it worked!
It also had the added side benefit of making everyone hyperaware of their use of filler words. By the end of th year these kids were beasts at public speaking. I also had everyone do Demosthenes speeches where they had to bite pencils for the whole speech. Just wild stuff
but effective!
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
