In a previous post, I wanted to prove that people do read through posts but it ended up giving me ideas for different methods to build engagement with my readers. Thus, for the post today, I will be trying another method of having the reader interact with this post.
The task is simple, based on the clues throughout the story, all you have to do is guess the ending. So this happened to me not long ago. I was giving a talk on the benefits of technology in the classroom to a group of teaching specialists. It was not easy because many of them came with the mindset that technology is just not feasible in the classroom. Many thought that the use of more traditional methods is far more efficient. This was based on a survey conducted before the talk. As such, I knew that the talk was not going to be easy.
As I entered the conference room, I did a quick look around to gauge my audience. You know when you try to sound positive, you tell yourself that there is good news and bad news. For my case, the good news was that I was the youngest in the entire conference room. Hurray? The bad news was that none of them looked happy to be there. I found out later that it was made mandatory for most of them to be here by their superiors. Yay.
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I began the conference with a humble introduction about myself and I dove into the topic, I went slide by slide. Immediately, I felt something was amiss. As a teacher, you develop this sixth sense, this spider sense, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is but alarm bells went off in my head. I scanned the room (while delivering my slides) and noticed that they started whispering to each other. Ok, students talking in the classroom, I can call them out. But these are all specialists in education. Heck, the youngest person in the room looked like my aunt.
As much as I want to make the whole conference room stand as a form of punishment, I think it will be counter-productive. These were experienced teachers, they were reprimanding students and punishing them since.... Since I was a student.
Think, what can you do? I added a joke. Bad idea, I got a sympathetic laugh. Come to think about it, it is not even Steemit worthy, so I would not even write it down. At this point of time, my mind began to race, thank God I do not sweat when I panic, but I do pace. Mind racing and rapid pacing is bad, it is like being trapped in a cage with a slow moving zombie, you can walk fast enough to get out of its way but you just have no idea what to do with it.
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I don't know about you, but when my mind races, I try to come up with solutions. I thought to myself, I should identify the problem. Oh great...
What is it this time? Did I forget to zip up my pants? Mind you as this was going on, I was still presenting my slides. Some guys would be able to identify the ninja-not-so-obvious-light-touch-of-the-zip to check if one's pants is zipped. For the uninitiated, I did a fake turn on stage, facing my back towards the crowd wile lightly touching the zip of my pants.
Check.
My pants was zipped. So what are they talking about? To make matters worse, the whispers were now accompanied with a brief giggle/laughter. Anger was the next emotion to take over, I spent hours preparing for this, how dare you all laugh at me. I thought of flipping the table and demanding respect. I thought of belittling them with my extensive use of sarcasm. However, just before my thoughts wondered into murderous territory, an idea came to mind. I thought since I am not in a favorable position, I should retreat.. temporarily.
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It was at this point that I called for a 15 minute break. This should give me the opportunity to gather my thoughts and find out what is wrong. Some of my audience started leaving the room to the toilet. A few remained and at this point, the stares, the giggles can still be felt and heard. It was at this point that one of the experts came up the stage and walked towards me.
She was a lady, weathered by the years of teaching, bearing mental battle scars of handling the toughest students that life could throw at her. She had a controlling aura, a commanding presence and she stared at me once she was near me on stage and said.......
I shall leave it to you to guess what she said. Could it be my hair or something worse, I leave it to you to guess the ending of the story. All I can say is that the clue can be found in the post. That being said, I hope you have enjoyed this, do let me know what you think was the outcome of the story in the comments below.
