Being a teacher or substitute teacher might seem intimidating to some people because you are constantly speaking in front of a live audience.  Sure, your audience is often a young one, and they may need reminders to sit “Cross Criss, Applesauce.”  But I’ve often thought that substitute teaching is a great opportunity for young professionals to hone their public speaking skills.  Here are three lessons I’ve learned from my experience in the classroom that will help anyone’s public speaking skills:

1. Attention Getters
2. Engage your audience
3. Respond to Questions

1. Attention Getters: If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from my substitute teaching experience so far, it’s that just because I am talking doesn’t mean the room is listening.  Before you start, make sure you have the room’s attention.  If my instructions fall on inattentive ears, then I end up having to repeat myself, or answer questions multiple times.  Students get confused about what they should be doing.  In the classroom, teachers normally have a number of different “Attention Getters.”  This might be anything from a bell chime to a call and response, like, “If you can hear me, clap once.  If you can hear me, clap twice.”  This allows students to finish up their conversations and turn their focus to the teacher.
2. Engage your audience: Previously, as a frequent presenter of financial information, I always had to link my material back to what mattered to the company.  Why should the board care if our company hit certain revenue targets?  It always fell to the story behind the numbers, like how fast was our sales cycle and what was our customer retention rate.  In a similar fashion, teachers find ways to make their classroom instruction relevant for their students.  If they are learning in math about fractions, show students what this looks like with pieces of pizza!  What if they are learning about the American Revolution?  Instead of leaving students to read out of the textbook, perhaps have them re-enact some historical events to experience the conflicts and dilemmas themselves.
3. Respond to Questions: One thing I used to get nervous about was answering questions from the board.  So, to make sure I had the answers at my fingertips, I tried to anticipate what questions I would get asked, and prepared pages and pages of notes.  I realized over time that if your audience is asking questions, it’s a great sign that they are listening and thinking critically about what you’re saying.  In fact, asking questions is an instructional technique that dates back to the Classical Greek philosopher Socrates in what’s called the Socratic Method.  When students ask questions or rephrase what you’ve taught in class, they are building their own mental models of the material.  Teachers call this the Constructivist approach to learning, where students discover or construct their own models of understanding.

Public speaking gets easier with practice, and having an audience of 20-30 kids will help you build the confidence for audiences of any size.