TeachersTopic is a periodical feature about a subject of interest to the teaching community written by a prominent expert in the field published on TeachersCount.com. This month, Professor Elynne Chaplik-Aleskow answers questions about teaching communication to students. As a professor of speech communication, she has written numerous articles about her field in publications including The Chicago Sun-Times and the Blog Herald. Ms. Chaplik-Aleskow has also been named Chicago’s Outstanding Woman in Communication by Chicago’s YWCA.
You have taught at the high school and college level. How have these experiences differed and how have they been similar?
Teaching is one of my great passions. I began my career as a high school English teacher at Mather High School in Chicago. I am now a Professor of Speech Communication at Wright College in Chicago
At the public urban community college where I teach, many of my students are college freshmen who were high school seniors just months before. Students are expected to be independent and mature in course assignments and classroom decorum.
High school students have always been my favorite age group. Their search for self and their need for expression have been exciting challenges for me as a teacher. In teaching college students, I balance this mission of self-discovery with the standards of the workplace and the expectations of the professional world.
Why is it important for students to study public speaking?
The study of public speaking is an experience that results in the creation of a public/professional self, more confidence and poise, and personal pride. Students should begin the process of oral presentation as early as possible in their education. No student is too young. “Show and Tell” is the beginning of the experience before an audience. The educational curriculum of each grade level should involve public speaking. Every subject should require students to present or explain a project or assignment to the class.
The earlier students begin this experience, the less traumatic it will be for them. A poll was taken of the American public asking people to identify their major fears. In the results, death was #2 and public speaking was #1. People feared public speaking over death!
Many of my colleagues dread having to lecture in front of a class. It is not only our students who feel this fear of speaking before an audience.
Today’s students at all levels of education use technology to communicate. E-mailing and text messaging are now communication norms. How many students, however, can stand before a group of people and present themselves and their thoughts in an articulate and poised manner? How many students use eye contact when communicating?
Some public speaking skills are called “life survival skills.” What are they and why have they earned this title?
Life Survival Skills is a term I use for the skills I teach. I have designed Speech 101 as a combination Public Speaking and Life Survival Skills course. Once one has faced and dealt with fear—such as the fear of public speaking—and survived, one can face almost anything in life. Once my students have learned and developed strong performance skills, they can use them in their personal and professional lives to generate and fulfill their hopes and achieve their goals. It is a journey my students and I take together.
My experience with industry and my commitment to academic standards of excellence are teaching strengths that I bring to the classroom. I am especially interested in creating a balance between the academic expectations that the college has of its students and the professional expectations that business and industry will have. When my students leave me at the end of the semester, they take with them a new part of themselves, a part many of them have discovered for the first time in my course.
In designing my course as a life survival skills experience, I begin by asking students to write a self-inventory telling me about themselves and what they need and want from a communication course. I ask that if I could custom design this course to meet their personal needs, what would they want from the course and from me. Their responses have been varied and often moving. At the end of the semester, I return their self-inventories and ask them to do another. However, this time the self-inventory will be shared orally with the class as we sit in a circle facing one another. I ask each student to compare the feelings and thoughts that were expressed in the earlier self-inventory with more current ones—especially in regard to the development of their public speaking skills, their interpersonal skills, and their relationships in the workplace. Then, after each student shares his or her insights, we move around the circle with class members sharing their thoughts and observations about how that particular student has grown and developed over the semester.
