Seeing eye to eye: getting comfortable with making eye contact

5 fun effective activities to teach how to make eye contact - for middle school +

I taught teenagers. These are wonderful, dynamic, exacting people who can lurch wildly between, "Yes, I can. Yes, I will. Yes, I'm doing it! Watch me now!" and complete abject misery.

"I can't! I won't! I'll die if you make me give a speech. And if you try and make me, make eye contact while I'm up there, in front of others, publicly dying, you're the cruelest, most heartless, woman in the world."

If you've taught the age group, you'll know.

So here are 5 of the activities I used to get them comfortable with making eye contact while delivering a speech. Later I found they worked well with adults too. 

The rationale behind them is simple.

If we tease apart the skills we bundle together as public speaking confidence, it makes teaching and practicing them easier and more effective.

Making good eye to eye contact is one of these skills. Just as using appropriate language is, or standing tall, speaking clearly, providing suitable handouts are...and so on.

Once isolated, a skill can be taught and learned. Then, hopefully, it can be easily used without conscious effort. 

It's a strategy that worked for me. I hope it does for your students too. Take it slowly. Make it fun and give them lots of encouragement.

For more see: Why is eye contact so important? 5 activities to teach how to make good eye contact, plus: the meaning of eye contact, cultural difference, the reasons why it’s important, the difference between good and creepy eye contact, and more.

That’s it for this week.
Hope life is behaving itself for you,
Susan

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