Finding our voices

I have a quiet son. He has listened to his two big siblings his whole life. They are his models. They are bigger than him. They sometimes (often?) speak for him. He is almost five and his thoughts are brilliant and amazing...and we are teaching him to use his voice. We are teaching him his thoughts matter. He knows how to speak (and he's insightful and thoughtful and kind and funny), but what he lacks is the understanding of how and when and why it is important to SPEAK UP.

Today I watched my students speak. They all spoke. We had a trial and some of them were lawyers. Others were court-appointed psychiatrists. Some, still, were witnesses. And they all talked and they were all eloquent and brave and spoke with poise and confidence. They projected, they made eye contact, and they improvised.

I have been thinking for a while about how we teach (or learn) to speak well. It is well documented that one of the most terrifying phobias in our culture is the fear of public speaking. And, with a little thought and conversation, here is my own thinking.

I think we learn to speak on a continuum. It's a spiraling continuum built on trial and error and reflection and opportunity. I once wrote a poem about learning to speak, as a young boy, in a crowd of my noisy, funny, opinionated uncles. It went like this:

The Patio Men

They made it look easy, those family men

with their beers, and their beards, and their wit.

Clad in caps and sweaters, and packing stories

in the stories. Punch lines punched with reckless zeal.

How many stories did it take young us, the boys,

in our waiting and our listening to jab our way in

and stab our own claim to the mic? In our glowing

at the chuckles, and the back slaps, we slide back

through that hole of shoulders, warm in sweater

and cap, to dream of a beard and a story of our own.

I vividly recall what that was like...the practicing and reworking of conversational comfort in a crowd. And now, I see it like this...a circular continuum that begins with the literal voice (listening and emulating and sharing), then gaining confidence, creating stories and ideas, mastering a topic and teaching others, then persuading others of an opinion; debating and discourse comes next, and--through this process--we learn to think on our feet and improvise. We grow to hold the attention of larger groups, and to hold command of a room until...finally, we return to our voice and grow comfortable sharing who we are and from where we've come.

9. Identity (sharing who we really are)

8. Poise (“command of the room”)

7. Improvisation (thinking on one’s feet in a scholarly way)

6. Discourse (debating, discussing, & the art of disagreeing well)

5. Persuasion (“make the audience care”)

4. Mastery (themes and topics, research and delivery)

3. Creation (vision and development of novel ideas)

2. Confidence (speaking on one’s own)

1. Voice (listening and sharing)

Of course, not everyone learns this...but I believe in my son. And I believe in my students. And if they can believe in themselves, they'll be just fine one day.