Authenticity, Body Language & Presence- Teaching Authentically

Defining “Presence”

Differentiating the Teacher from the Teachings

• The teachings are the content. The teacher delivers the content.
• The teachings are filtered through the “presence” of the human doing the teaching.

Why Define & Dissect Your Presence?

What exactly makes up your overall presence? This is a difficult-to-pinpoint aspect of teaching, but here we endeavor to explore it for the purposes of more easily identifying opportunities to increase teaching effectiveness.

• We can think of presence as a collection of attributes and behaviors that include the sonic elements and rhythms of your voice, the words you choose, your body language and other factors related to how you show up and deliver your teaching.
• On one hand, a teacher’s presence may be the most obvious thing about them and includes what makes them unique. But on the other hand, it’s difficult to tease apart the things that make up a person’s presence in order to examine them more methodically.
• The reason we are using this lesson to dissect presence is to enable you to 1) Embrace what is uniquely you, while also 2) Systematically identifying aspects of your delivery that may be improved for maximum effectiveness. 
• In other words, while sometimes a teacher can improve by learning to refine a technique such as choosing words to express a teaching, other times improvement comes from finding ways to be more your authentic self.

This is Not About Conforming to “Norms”

The point in exploring elements of your teaching style is not to imply there is a “right” way to be a teacher. Your individuality reflects your particular gifts and differentiates you among teachers. This is your strength!

• In other words, you should not confuse analyzing your approach with an effort to change what makes you unique. This examination is not for the purposes of conforming to “norms.”
• Rather, the goal is to use methods that assist you in authentically expressing your unique experience and perspective.

This analysis is intended to:

1. Inspire you to clarify your values and goals as a teacher, and
2. Empower you to experiment with specific techniques to build and improve aspects of your teaching that will help you to meet those goals.

Some aspects of this topic may naturally make you feel vulnerable and imperfect — which, remember, we all are!

• So, we invite you to take a nice, slow breath. Relax your face and shoulders, and choose to be curious.
• Consciously choose to see your own areas for improvement and feel excitement about the power you have to continuously evolve as a person and teacher.