Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Delaney there?

From the second that we first started talking at 7:30a.m., Delaney and I were immediately discussing people and their behavior.

We started with people who speak for a living — how so many are animated and outgoing when in front of an audience, but extremely self-conscious when they first meet someone individually. I suggested that the difference was once explained to me as a matter of who is holding the microphone. I suppose in today’s environment that could be considered the ultimate permission to talk.

Delaney and I discussed talking to the audience before a presentation and other ways to draw an audience into the experience, ways to make a relationship before the first word is spoken. We shared the pain of watching someone who had memorized every word, and the misuse of PowerPoint <--well, we said the word, PowerPoint. We were more interested in mindmapping and storytelling. It figures that two teachers would be. We spent the most time talking about how people remember stories and the ideas that stories illuminate.

Dr. Kirk taught me a term I’d not heard before — impression management — managing how people perceive us. We discussed the way teachers manage their image so that students respond with respect for them and what they have to say. That made me think about how I did that with the first graders in my classes. It came up how our impressions affect whether we cut someone a little slack when we find they have reached a rough spot. I told her that’s why I studied harder for the first test than the final in my college classes — the first test said who I was. Delaney knew exactly what I meant.

Delaney wanted everyone to know that the book list she asked for is longer than she could have imagined, and now she has her work cut out deciding which books to use when class begins in January. That led us into a discussion of how she was thinking that her next book might come from her blog. I pointed out that knowing that now works in her favor; she can write her blog with the book in mind. We talked about ways to do that. One way was to write a series of blog posts that would become each chapter — later she could pull the content together already organized, rewriting only to smooth the segues.

She’s full-time professor, one busy blogger, our Dr. Delaney Kirk, and now she’s going to write another book!

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

I enjoy blogging because I’m able to reach out to mentor people, and share the little bit I know and other people can do that too. —Delaney Kirk

Stop by Delaney’s Blog, Ask Dr. Kirk, and say hi!

Thanks, Delaney, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.