What makes a good speaker?

School teachers, every so often, have the distinct pleasure of being the participants in what we call INSET days. Children have the day off and teachers get to come in wearing their jeans –bearing some resemblance to normality. INSET days are usually led (or facilitated) by members of the SLT (Senior Leadership Team). If however, the school is particularly lucky (and sufficiently up on funds for that particular academic year) it is graced by the presence of a guest speaker. In one such INSET (one that was entirely irrelevant and useful only for private contemplation) I got to thinking about what makes a good speaker. What engages an audience? What is that we want to hear?

I decided that there were two things to consider. One, people wanted to hear things that they hadn’t heard before or they wanted to hear what they knew, but didn’t know they knew –if you get what I mean. Let me explain, by listing the sort of responses (mental or out loud) that an audience (that was engaged) might say.

“Ah…that’s interesting. I never knew that!”

Or

“Ah, I totally relate to what he/she just said, and just didn’t know, that I knew that!”

When the response is simply: “I knew that”, you know that the speaker is being patronising or irrelevant or both.

In exactly the same way, I thing the same goes for pupils and their reactions (mental responses or perhaps more verbal ones!) to us. If we bleat on about something they know and they know they know, what on earth is the point of that? The response, and understandably, would be utter boredom, defiance, or bad behaviour as a result of a growing lack of respect. Instead, the key is to package the things they know they know, in a way that they relate to, but didn’t quite see in that context.