One of my favorite teachers, non-Donovan division, taught me about how I carry myself. How body language tells peers a lot about what kind of person you are and how you think of yourself. Hold your head high and keep your sights forward!
EC (former student)
My response:
What a great lesson to learn! So much can be communicated (both good and bad, internal and external) with body language.
More on how to carry yourself:
We can all probably agree that when you feel confident your body language is “bigger”. You may stand taller, sit more upright, hands firmly on hips or arms crossed high up on your body. When you are not feeling confident, the opposite is true. You make yourself physically smaller.
Why is it that a team huddles together before they go out on the field? They build each other up, helping everyone get excited and in the right mindset for the game. Basically they create the attitudes and energies they need for success before the game even starts. This is done physically in many ways. Players cheer each other on. They will jump together, slapping each other on the back. It is also done nonverbally. People’s faces are open. Their eyes are wider with raised eyebrows. They make eye contact with their teammates. They are smiling. Chests are open with arms spread out or up. Even if power posing does not biologically alter us in the way originally proposed, groups clearly use physical behavior to shape emotion and mindset.*
We need more of this in the classroom. What I considered my best teaching days were defined by a few things. Most would not seem appropriate for a place of serious study. My favorite classes always had a feeling of chaos to them. They were loud, active, and energetic. The atmosphere of the room was filled with students in groups deep in discussion, sometimes talking over each other with enthusiasm about the topic. This would happen mostly on lab days, but would also occur with any group work. I would be tired at the end of the period, moving from group to group as new ideas or arguments arose.
Even though the classes were loud, there was still a lot of nonverbal communication. When a student was unsure about what to do or uncertain of an answer, you would see them looking around the room. Eye contact between students would decrease. They might remove themselves subtly from the group by pulling away from the table, or turning their bodies away from their partners. It was easy to see where I should go to help, cajole, encourage, or redefine.
This is why on-line classes were not nearly as effective during Covid. Having a group of twenty students, all tightly packed in their own picture frames on a computer, made seeing nonverbal cues near impossible. And, it was exhausting to the teacher to keep panning the screen for any clue that a student was struggling.
Most people who have taken a Psych 101 class have probably heard this story. The students in a lecture hall decide to “operantly condition” their instructor. Whenever the professor moved toward one side of the room, the students would smile, make eye contact, and appear engaged. When the professor moved elsewhere, they’d look bored, stop taking notes, or avoid eye contact. Over time, the professor unconsciously spends more and more time in the “rewarded” area of the room until he is effectively trapped in one corner. While I couldn’t find any evidence this really happened, the story is usually presented as an illustration of behavior being shaped by nonverbal reinforcement.
Even when lecturing or presenting a powerpoint, teaching is not just verbal instruction. It is also constant emotional calibration. A teacher adjusts so much (pace, tone, difficulty, and energy) based on dozens of tiny nonverbal signals every minute.
And a teacher has to keep in mind all the nonverbal cues they are giving their students. Looking away from someone while they are trying to answer you can be devastating to a student. Or, just putting your hand on a student’s shoulder as they are working on a problem can give them the confidence to keep at it.
It’s not just with students. We all physically display confidence or uncertainty in how we present ourselves to others. And we also unconsciously mirror one another. So if a teacher shows confidence in a student, that student may very well feel more confident. If we keep ourselves big and open, everyone benefits. A calm teacher can settle a nervous room. An excited group can energize even a tired teacher. Humans constantly borrow emotional signals from each other without realizing it.
* In 2012 Dr. Amy Cuddy presented a TEDtalk titled, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are.” It was a very popular talk with almost 77 million views in the last fourteen years. Her premise was that physically adopting a confident posture — feet spread apart, hands on hips like Superman or Wonder Woman — could trigger hormonal changes that make a person feel more powerful. You can basically fake it until you make it. Where we know your attitude will affect your body language, she postulated that your body language can affect your attitude.
Since that time there has been a lot of controversy about her conclusions. Other researchers have been unable to replicate her results in the lab. That is just good science. Scientific conclusions need to be measurable and repeatable, not just anecdotal to be valid. But there seemed to be a lot of anger towards her about this. While she did state those were her findings, they were also new and had to be tested. I think the blowback from her talk by some researchers was a little over the top. Or, it may just be how it was reported years later.
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