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Here is my tilt at getting a copy of Maggie Eyre's book "Speak Easy".
I need Maggie's help, actually I need more than Maggie's help. I am training to be a teacher - so I feel I need some help, well actually quite a bit. Some have suggested a trip to the psyckyatrist, the most disturbing part of this is that the advice seems to come mainly from teachers or ex-teachers. This has left me somewhat confused. If I need to see a psyckyatrist, does this then mean that you need to be mad to be a teacher, and if teachers are mad, then how do they know that they are mad in order for them to advise me? I am not going to teach English, is that a problem? If I could spell psyckyatrist properly, I might be able to find one in the phone book. I read your precis of Maggie's book with interest and would certainly like to find out her methods of ensuring eye contact. Speaking within a small group (say 3 or 4) it is relatively easy to move your eyes around from one to the other. But with a class I am just at a loss at how to maintain eye contact - perhaps handing out binoculars for the students to fix their eyes on mine. I could use some sort of string attaching the binoculars to a hat on the top of my head to make sure that they are looking my way. Then again how do I know that they are actually looking at me - we all know that looking through the binoculars the wrong way make things look smaller. So perhaps I should also have a pair of binoculars ... and ... by using fibre-optic cable ... I will then be able to see if any eyes are not on me. This could be a logistical nightmare during school assemblies. If Maggie uses this method, how does she cope if there is a panel of speakers? You said that humour will probably help my chances, but I felt that I ought to play this one straight. Now where is my dictionary, maybe there isn't a silent p in syckyatrist, after all. Regards |
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© 2008, Daryl Crosby
Last Update Jan 2008 |