By Luciana Caffesse, EDC Instructional Designer
Last week, the annual Teaching and Learning Symposium featured a keynote address entitled ‘Plastic Passion – The Brain Knoweth What the Heart Seeks’ by national icon Dr. Roberta Bondar, Canada’s first female astronaut and a renowned scientist, photographer and educator.
Not only did her hour-long presentation carry the whole audience away, but it represented the ‘gold standard for engagement’ that was highlighted in several sessions at the symposium. Such successful rhetoric may be viewed as contingent on someone being an exceptionally talented individual, but it should not remain unanalyzed by attendees of a symposium on high impact practices; at least not for this forever learner in education, who is ready to blog about it.
Components
Three basic components stood out:
- The Story: As a guiding thread to substantiate her claim of plastic passion, Dr. Bondar selected meaningful examples in the autobiography of Bobbie, later Roberta, who grew up ordinarily in Sault Ste. Marie.
- Storytelling: Dr. Bondar used a relaxed and joyful tone with changes in volume and intonation, spiced with hilarious comments and anecdotes. She appealed to human emotions; from passion, astonishment and joy to distress, shame and disgust for caterpillars. All these wrapped in memories that hopped from childhood in the ‘50s to a recent dinner with friends, carrying us away – back and forth – to the Yukon, to Africa, and to the moon.
- Art: The components above could have been engaging enough. However, they were topped with neat sepia snapshots, an iMax-quality array of bird’s eye views of Canada’s Parks and space, even tinged with a colourful ancient engraving (the Flammarion engraving) to illustrate ‘curiosity.’
Images were as large as the screen permitted, which let us feel closer, more involved. Except for less than a dozen unbulleted words (not even phrases), written text was absent.
Two Bets
- Are we, mere mortal educators, capable of accomplishing this? I bet we all are. Although outstanding, Dr. Bondar’s presentation was definitely a speech, a presenter-to-audience one-way communication event. This can be equated with the address of a university instructor, before it is complemented with student-centered and collaborative activities to become a fine university lesson. Ultimately, it basically consisted of:
- A narrative with meaningful examples
- Empathy with audience; for example, we all like stories (even adults and rigorous researchers), and we all dislike flat, pale, blurred, monotone, soporific speeches (students included)
- A slideshow to support the oral script, and not vice versa
- I bet I was not the only one who almost fell down the slippery slope of intimidation (that ends in frustration) before a person who is highly accomplished in several fields, and has led a life filled with insights, experiences and rewards. But wait, don’t fall! Take a few self-justifying steps backwards one foot at a time:
- Maybe Dr. Bondar was not so ‘ordinarily’ raised. I wish many boomers had such experience-encouraging parents, got a camera for their own use or flew to see their grandparents all before kindergarten.
- In fact, as Dr. Bondar said, when she was already committed to missions, people in the audience hadn’t even started shaving yet.
That was close! That little bit of perspective helped you keep your balance against falling down the slope. Now you can breath; you overcame the paranoia in you as you continue thinking:
- Dr. Bondar herself must have struggled, for example, with gender issues just to enter (and then excel in!) the fields of science and technology in the ‘60s.
- Dr. Bondar’s self-awareness in respect of personal passion and in appreciation of the endless possibilities of our context (as vast as the cosmos) is an accessible formula.
You feel your feet flat on the ground again.
Two ‘Lets’
You chose: you could have let yourself fall down; instead, you let her brightness encourage and inspire you, standing up safe to go. ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’, said Lao Tse. It may not be possible to catch up to Dr. Bondar’s achievements, but maybe we can try to move closer to her successful formulas for audience engagement and passion-led life? Challenge accepted. Assumption confirmed: ‘my brain knoweth what my heart seeks.’