ED1531 Introduction to Christian Education
The Method of Being Present
In the 1960s, the Detroit Police was trying to bring order to the city’s racial tensions. There have been outbreaks of street riots. Police officers were often targets of violence but they were also commissioned to maintain order in the community. They came up with the strategy of “presencing.” With respected community leaders in their patrol vehicles, they drove around the neighborhoods to maintain a presence but not to agitate aggression. In this example, how do we take the idea of “presencing” to teach?
A. Focus what’s at hand with no other distractions.
Know that you are teaching and these are the learners.
B. Give attention to the class.
Maintain order and an environment for learning to happen.
C. Practice active listening.
Listen carefully enough to be able to repeat back to the speaker what you heard and to check for clarification.
D. Avoid interrupting the speaker with your agenda or experience (“When that happened to me, I…”).
Try to hear what the person is saying without comparing your experience to his/hers.
E. Maintain consistent eye-contact.
Let no distractions around the room or outside reduce your attention of the speaker or event.
F. Permitting silence or lapse of time respects different degrees of participation from learners.
Patience to wait for participants and granting permission to share in groups are ways have everyone present.
G. Empathize to build and elaborate on discussions rather than to change the direction of the discussion.
“I’ve had that happened to me before, what happened next?”
H. Ways to Midwife Discussion, pp. 119-120 (Everist)
I. Avoid “Multitasking.”
Multitasking hampers memory. Memory loss that appears to be age-related is turning out to be multitask-related instead. MIT researchers have used the term, “passive queuing” to explain how bits of information must line up after the next—not side by side—in order to be processed by the brain. (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/21/05)
G. Be physically present.
Nothing is more effective than making yourself available to your learners.
DN, 2/24/05