Well Spoken with Erik Palmer
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in, everybody. You are listening to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being with us. Today's topic. Well I don't know if we'll get too meta with it, but we'll have a lot to do with podcasting.
It's all about speaking skills, how to teach them, how to develop them. My guest is Eric Palmer. Eric is an educational consultant from Denver prior to becoming a consultant prior to getting an education. Overall, he had a successful career in business managing a commodity brokerage office.
and trading on the floor of a Chicago commodity exchange. He was the national sales leader for a large commodity trading firm. And then in his second career, he spent 21 years teaching [00:01:00] English, math, science, and civics, earning teacher of the year in one of the nation's top school districts. And now, he is in his third career as a consultant.
He focuses on showing teachers, practical, engaging ways to teach oral communication skills and showing educational leaders how to be more effective communicators. Eric is the author of several books, including the one we are talking about today, it is called well spoken. Teaching speaking to all students.
It is the second edition of that book. So many of you may be familiar with that book over the years. There's a pretty new second edition that just came out recently. It is available from Rutledge. Eric, welcome to the show.
Erik Palmer: Hey, thanks, Ross. Thanks for the invite.
Ross Romano: Yeah, it's wonderful to have you here and a great topic. One that certainly as we'll get into later in this conversation, some of the things that are new in the book relate to these digital speaking contexts, like the one We are in right now. Maybe let's introduce people sort of in that [00:02:00] context, but what is.
Effective oral communication today in 2025. When we think about this how should our listeners be kind of conceiving of the topics that we're discussing here?
Erik Palmer: See, and that's the key question. And that's the question that no educator knows. So if I could take a minute, I'll go even a little further back than the bio that you introduced. Before I got into commodity brokerage, I was that kid who was in high school debate and forensics. And then I went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
Boy, howdy. I was on the debate team there. They would fly me around the country to argue. So I thought when I graduated I was going to spend my life arguing. I went to the University of Denver Law School. But I veered off, as you mentioned, into commodity trading and then when my kids were born, into teaching kids.
I started in the fifth, sixth grade classroom. So here's what I discovered. Speaking obviously was really important to me, [00:03:00] really important to my first career. It's a very verbal business on the floor of the exchange or in a commodity brokerage. But I got into the classroom, 5th and 6th graders remember, they spoke terribly.
They were really poor. My co teacher said, well, we have kids do a book report every quarter. Great, that's what I'll do. They got up to do their book report in October and they were dreadful. I mean, listen with new ears to how your students speak. It's not good. So I asked my teammates, I said, well, where are the materials that we have for teaching speaking?
Because these kids aren't good. I said, well that's just how kids speak. Yeah, but it's not how they can speak. We had a spelling program, a daily oral language program, we had a math book, we had basal readers, we had novel sets. I said, where's the stuff about speaking? I said, well, do we all agree on what it takes to teach kids how to speak?
What are the skills of speaking? Another awkward [00:04:00] pause because teachers don't know. We make kids talk, but we've never taught them how to speak well. So at the time six trait writing was popular so you can't just do one score for a writing piece. There are different components, there's word choice, there's mechanics, there's sentence structure.
I said, well, I want to invent, if you will, six traits speaking. I want to break speaking into the parts that are necessary and teachable so that every student can learn how to speak well. And so that's where I got the idea for the original edition of Well Spoken. (ad here)
Ross Romano: You touched on creating the vision and the objectives for what speaking should be. What are some of the other areas that, present the most Or the most struggle, I guess, is present with teachers when it comes to teaching speaking.
I mean, is it time, priorities, confidence, know how, [00:05:00] right? Like, what I guess prevents teachers maybe once there is an understanding of that, that speaking is generally part of the skills we want to teach, or we have some idea of what it would look like. What are the other things that that are. You know, present challenges that it's not happening more commonly, you
Erik Palmer: certainly a challenge is it's not on the big test. And people are always talking about reading and writing, reading and writing, reading and writing, as if it's one word, reading and writing. And they're talking about math. So, that's one challenge, but I think the bigger challenge is the teachers don't know how to teach speaking.
No one ever taught them. And as with the teachers I worked with when I started, there are no materials. We never had any kind of PD about teaching speaking. There were no courses in any teacher preparation program about how to teach speaking. So I think the biggest barrier is, we don't know how to do it.[00:06:00]
And that's what I think. I've tried to solve with well spoken the first edition and the second. Break it into manageable, teachable parts so that every teacher can be effective improving oral communication in the classroom.
Ross Romano: know, what's uniquely important about learning speaking, like, I guess, in some ways, right, it expands on and reveals other skills, writing skills the other components of literacy. And, but are there other areas? In which learning speaking is really important independently.
Erik Palmer: Well, it's foundational. It is what everything in your classroom depends upon. This is what mystifies me. There is so much speaking, so much oral communication in the education business, and yet we ignore the most important language art. Reading aloud improves. Poetry recitations improves. Showing solutions at the board improves.
Biography [00:07:00] presentations, lab reports, everything in your classroom improves if kids speak well. Not to mention just your basic discussions Socratic seminars. Everything in your classroom is better if kids speak well. And so we need to focus on this foundational skill. and give every student a voice in the original meaning of the term.
Ross Romano: Yeah. That's, I would say that the fact typically is that nothing is an absolute in most even things that apply most of the time when we say you have to have this skill, you have to be able to do this, that there's. Plenty of exceptions, plenty of ways to have successful, fulfilling life without necessarily needing any one individual thing.
But speaking, presenting skills certainly stands out to me as something that without it, there is a limitation to [00:08:00] what one can achieve regardless of their other skills or You know, knowledge, intelligence, et cetera, that there's certain things you can't do a certain level. You can't attain certain influence.
You can't have and it doesn't necessarily mean that those things align to what everybody's. goals are, right? But there's it's like having really solid speaking skills can make up for and certainly enable you to over perform your relative knowledge and abilities in some areas, but not having them can hold you back from For a lack of a better word, scaling if I'm a really good engineer or whatever the case may be, right?
I can't necessarily effectively lead. an organization if I don't have some of these skills, things like that.
Erik Palmer: You know, absolutely, that's very well said. It is, as I mentioned, [00:09:00] the foundational skill. It is the key to professional and social success. And I don't care if you want to be a hairdresser or put a bid in for landscaping or manage the faculty meeting or present to the board of directors. Speaking skills are on display like they never were before.
But they've always been important. But now we're in an era where people are, as you mentioned earlier, podcasting. We're in an era where the first interview for most jobs is speaking. I was talking to a company that said, the first thing we do is have prospective employees go online. They open up this video.
They are asked five questions. Not having to do with work, not having to do with necessarily the job application. Just ask five questions so we can get a sense of how well they speak. So the first thing an employer sees is a speaking skill. And if you can't do that well, how many opportunities are missing?
Ross Romano: Yeah. What comes first of speaking, [00:10:00] confidence or competence, or does it matter or does it vary?
Erik Palmer: Well, competence will give you confidence. And of course, the big story out there is, well, people fear public speaking. Well, yes, because no one taught you how to do it. If I said, Ross, get up on stage with this piece of paper and make an origami swan for everyone to see, you would not like that if you didn't know how to make an origami swan.
And yet, we do this to kids all the time. Get up there and give your book report in October, as I did when I started teaching, without giving them any idea about how to do a book report. how to do a poetry recitation, how to be in an interview. So, when I give you competence and teach you the skills needed to be successful, yeah, the confidence follows.
Like, I can do this. And even kids who are introverts, knowing the skills needed can do it. They may not love doing it the way the outgoing person [00:11:00] does, but not everybody likes math, not everybody likes writing, not everybody likes reading. My goal is to make people better at it. Even if it's not necessarily the thing they want to spend their life doing.
It will be important in every life.
Ross Romano: Yeah, I mean, in my experience, I think practice is, it's a form of exposure therapy for those who are uncomfortable with it, feel anxiety around it. You get better when you have more reps, but you just gain a comfort level that not everybody becomes the world's most effective speaker, but you just feel like you're in control of what you're doing.
At least you're clued in and, attentive and able to work on it and focus on it. And it's a. It's doing, I guess, kids a service to introduce that to them, even those who, their true communication skill may be in another medium. A kid who's a really effective writer, right? And [00:12:00] that there's, yeah, there's an element, I'm sure, in schools when we Are doing kind of multimedia communication and having writing and presenting and creation of digital products, et cetera, all as part of language arts, for example, or presentations in other subject areas and.
By doing that, one thing that it may do is empower each kid to, to express themselves in the ways that are true measures of their knowledge, right, because they're really good at one or the other or a couple areas but that it's still also serves them to make sure they're exposed to the ones that aren't their strengths, not only because they can get better at it, but because It just creates a comfort level and diminishes the fear of saying, okay, you, you can have a certain thing that you're best at.
It doesn't mean that the others have to be a zero.
Erik Palmer: Well, exactly so. [00:13:00] What I say is it doesn't matter what you know. It matters whether you can communicate what you know. And the number one way we do that is verbally. So at some point you've got this great portfolio of your artwork. You're going to have to present that to somebody. At some point you have this great idea and this great coding you've done.
At some point you're going to have to explain that to somebody. So it's key to success in whether or not it's a speaking career or not. It's still important. Well,
Ross Romano: Yeah. So let's let's talk about the components of speaking and of teaching speaking and kind of it fits into three phases. Building the speech, performing the speech, evaluating the speech, before, during, after. Let's just take them sort of in sequence, but in, in building the speech, what are some of the key elements that teachers should be focusing on [00:14:00] and helping students to understand?
What's the starting point?
Erik Palmer: Make clear in the book is that all speaking, I mean all speaking, one to one, small group, large group, formal, informal, in person, digital, all speaking involves two very distinct parts, what I call building the talk and performing the talk. Building refers to everything you do before you open your mouth.
Performing refers to the things you do as you are speaking. And these are very separate skill sets. Think screenwriter versus actor, but all speakers have to master these. And the first, it's really critical to get that distinction. You do some things before you open your mouth. You do other things as you speak.
Now, people don't fear before you open your mouth. And most teachers who give speaking assignments are really asking. Kids to write an essay and then they can kind of get up and mutter it aloud and we'll call it a speech [00:15:00] But really before you say a word you should think about these things audience content organization visual aids Five things, and they're all teachable.
Let me give you an example if I can. Audience. Any talk is for an audience. We don't teach this to kids, and that's why presentations are hated by classmates. You got up and you told me the name of the case, the date of the case, the number of justices who voted for it. You checked off all the items on the list that the teacher gave, and the kids in the class were bored to tears.
Analyze the audience. Every talk is for an audience. What do they know? What do they need to know? What are they capable of knowing? What mood are they in? Design the talk for the audience. Don't give a checklist talk that checks off the size of the country, the name of the country, two famous people from the country, products from that country.
Those are dreadful. [00:16:00] So the first thing I teach is audience. A talk is for an audience. Once you analyze the audience, then you can start building your content. The second thing you do before you open your mouth. What do you put in this speech? Yes, you put in the required stuff that the teacher asked you to put in.
But how about putting in something that connects the talk to the audience? For example, I had these kids do Supreme Court cases. There's a big difference between, Hi, my name is Eric. I'm going to talk about a Supreme Court search and seizure case. And how many of you have cell phones? How many of you would be okay if the principal took your cell phone and went through all of your text messages?
Well, my case doesn't involve cell phones, but it does involve someone going through something without permission. In my case, someone took garbage out to the edge of the street. Before the garbage men came to get it, police went through the garbage. Oh, wow, you designed that talk for the audience. You put in some content that [00:17:00] connects your talk to the audience.
These are the kind of teachable skills that you can do and I mean I could go on to how to do more organization, how to build better visual aids, how to dress the way you should dress, but I think you get the idea of that these are teachable things and I can say these are the five things to do. If you do these five things, you're ready to talk.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love that you start with the audience. That's the most important place to start. And it's, this is a section that everybody should read regardless, again, of the medium through which they're communicating. And it's something that I'm always insistent on in communicating in any form, whether it's sending an email or.
A social media post or something is start with who is it for then what is the pain point that I want to speak to or what is their, the interest? What's the specific thing that this is [00:18:00] doing for them or saying to them? And then. Think about what does it say? What do we add in there? What's the best way to communicate that?
But nothing makes sense unless you know who it's for. And in this way, it's kind of, it's sort of dawning on me that speaking and public speaking is sort of like the forerunner of digital media, the internet, digital communication, right? When you hear Some, I guess, whether or not people embrace this element tells you something about them, but you hear some writers, for example, journalists or people who.
You know, write online saying, oh, I either I love writing online because you can get immediate feedback. You can see which things more people are reading. You can hear what people like, and you can adapt and adjust other people who don't like that. Maybe they liked it when it was just in print somewhere and you didn't [00:19:00] necessarily know what was more popular or less.
But, yeah. Tapping into that and then the speaking side of it, it's kind of, it's, it both presents the opportunity that's available to be able to get that feedback and to see, to use your eyes to see it. Are people interested in this? Are they responding? Do they not like it? You know, makes me think of how long it takes and the reps and the practice and the iterations for, Probably any speaker, but someone like a stand up comic, right, to get their routine right, and they're going out, testing things, sometimes doing things that they know are not going to work, just to see if there's some part of this that works, and needing to go out there, and it only works It only is good subjectively.
It's good if people think it's good. It's not good if nobody in the audience thinks it's any good. It can't necessarily be good because it's done for the audience, right? Any [00:20:00] speaking, it doesn't matter what you're saying, how smart you are, how great your ideas are. If nobody understands what you're saying, or it's for, you're giving a speech about complex elements of geopolitics to kindergartners, or yes, congratulations.
You're very smart, but the audience didn't get anything out of that.
Erik Palmer: Exactly the point. Yes, because and that's what happens so often. It happens at faculty meetings. Adults are guilty of the same thing. Everybody walks out of the faculty meeting. Well, that was boring. Well, someone messed up You didn't analyze the audience and figure out what they needed from that faculty meeting But for kids to your point, it's a lot of fun to move to a digital world When I analyze the audience for a class presentation it's kids about like me They're about the same age as some boys and girls.
They have some different ideas But it's about the same when I moved to the digital world. Wow, let's analyze that audience who might see this [00:21:00] moms and dads kids and other classrooms Grandparents, it's a super fun thing for kids to expand their audience and to figure out how to make the talk now appeal to This digital world,
Ross Romano: Yeah. So let's go to the next phase. This is the during the performance of the speech. This is what I'm sure. Most people think of first when they think about speaking and what it is actually that act of being up there. And I think being really good at the 1st part of building the speech certainly can lead to the confidence in delivering it and delivering it effectively.
Right? And that's a part that is critical and and that is an area to really leverage the other skills that 1 has to do a good job. But. The performance of it is a struggle for many. And it's something that takes that practice, like we said, but it's an area where you have perhaps your kind of most well known framework as well built around this the PV legs.
So [00:22:00] love to have you talk through this, talk through how this how you came up with it, how it evolved over the years, how this continues to apply to the act of speaking.
Erik Palmer: but to your point, yes, you've built this great talk Which gives you some confidence if you've followed the steps in well spoken. You've built a great talk. You know, it's designed for the audience. It's got the right content. It has things that will connect with the audience. It's organized well with a great beginning, good transitions, a great ending.
You have powerful visual aids. You've dressed for success. You know, you're ready to go. It's all worthless if you can't perform it. And you notice that I use the word performance. People typically say you deliver a talk. But I think that's misleading because delivery is easy. Deliver a letter, deliver a package.
Any good talk, any talk, whether it's one to one, small group, large group, in person. It's [00:23:00] kind of a performance. And I want people to know that it's not just casual banter with friends. And so what I was concerned with was Asking teachers, what does it take to perform well? And the language is weird, it's different, it's often wrong.
Someone will say, kids should speak loudly, clearly, and slowly. Your listeners would turn this off. If I spoke loudly and slowly. We give them bad advice and we use words that they don't understand. Elocution, articulation, enunciation. I wanted to make it simple. and teachable. So I said, here's what it takes.
You need to be poised. You have to have a voice such that every word is heard. You don't have to speak loudly. You have to have life in your voice. You have to make eye contact. You have to gesture, and you have to use speed well. And I put that on a chalkboard. What? Chalkboard? Some people have to Google that [00:24:00] to see what it is.
And some child in the back of the room, as soon as I wrote it up there, said, PV legs! Well, that took on a life of its own. My website is pvlegs. com I had students call me years later and say, I had to do a presentation for my senior thesis in college. And I remembered PV legs, Mr. Palmer. I got an A. What those PV legs encompass is all the stuff that you need to be a great speaker.
Poise. You need to appear calm and confident. You're not, but you need to appear calm and confident. That means you avoid the distracting things that people do. And there's a lot of language similar to it. You know, teachers will say stand still, hold your head up. They give a don't shuffle, don't fidget.
Poise. Let's make it simple. Voice. You don't have to speak loudly. As I said, my father was very effective when he said, Eric, come here. I need every word heard, and [00:25:00] sometimes that means kids have to speak up. Sometimes it means they have to slow down. Sometimes it means they have to articulate better, because they're mumbling.
But I can say simply to a child, voice, you didn't hear every word. Life. I use that instead of inflection, expression, life. You've got to have some life in your voice. It's the biggest growth area for all speakers. You gotta have life, you need to make that poem come alive. If you're doing read aloud, I wanna hear the voices, I wanna hear the excitement at that part of the story.
It makes no sense to teach kids about prosody in reading, and the clues that authors give about how this is supposed to sound, if you haven't taught them about life. So they know that your voice can sound differently. Eye contact has shown up every place on the planet, even in places that I didn't think eye contact would be valued.
And teachers recognize its importance in public speaking. Gestures, what you do with your hands, your face, your body. And [00:26:00] speed. Don't speak slowly. Use speed well. Speed up, slow down, pause. But you can put that framework on any speaker, the person at the comedy club that you were mentioning, the televangelist.
The principal at your school. If they're poised. If they have a voice such that you can hear every word. If there's life in the voice. If they make eye contact. If they gesture well. If they use speed well. That's it. They are a great speaker. Now, having a blueprint is not the same as having a house. But at least kids know what it takes to be a great speaker and they know what to work on.
Well, I'm really good at poise, but I don't have a lot of life in my voice yet. And some other child has a lot of life, but it's just all over the place, fidgety and bouncing off the wall. Some kids have no gestures, some We know what to work on, just as we did with 6th grade writing. I'm really good with word choice, [00:27:00] but I don't punctuate well.
That's what PBLEGS does. It gives everybody a framework for understanding exactly what they need to do to be an effective speaker. (ad here )
Ross Romano: The thing that I think stands out as perhaps in some ways making it challenging, but in other ways, making it interesting and giving each individual an opportunity to develop into the type of effective speaker that. makes sense for them is that each of these six elements here is a Dial not a switch.
Hey, it's not you either have it or you don't it is There's a spectrum. There's variants. There's ways that you can use these More and less and dial them up, right? If we use eye contact as an example, it doesn't mean staring right at one person the entire time and I'm making eye contact with you. It's remembering to turn [00:28:00] to the different people in your audience.
It's the way that you use it, the speed, speeding up certain parts, slowing down sometimes for emphasis, finding the right middle ground not being too fast, not too slow. Same with gesture, the life in your voice, the tone all these various aspects that, one, there's a certain place probably on that spectrum that is the happy place for each individual person for what is true to the way they express themselves best and their style, but also it's knowing how to move those dials a little bit up a little bit down and to be able to have the variability.
And that's also what makes it a. lifelong pursuit of mastery, right? That it's not something that you just learn it. Okay. I know how to use speed now and then I'm done,
Erik Palmer: Yes, that is so well said. Because it is a [00:29:00] dial and it is incremental. You don't master it overnight. If I tell you that your visual aids are poor, you can go home and make better visual aids overnight. If I say I'd like you to work on more gestures. Well, that's going to take a while before you become comfortable.
But this is something that drives me crazy, Ross. So many teachers would give kids scores for something that they never taught. I see a lot of rubrics where teachers are giving a child a score for gestures. And I ask, did you ever teach them how to gesture? And that's a very awkward pause. These are teachable skills.
I can say to a child, I will be looking for emphatic hand gestures as you do your book report in October. Let me tell you what those are. And I put little practice phrases up on the board. I'll say, yes, we won! And I'll call in a volunteer. And someone will come up and they'll hold their fist clenched in front of their face.
Yes, we won! [00:30:00] Nice, fist clench. That's an emphatic hand gesture. Someone else will hold their arms up over their head. Yes, we won! Nice! That's an emphatic hand gesture. I'll be looking for those kinds of things in your talk. And maybe the next day I'll teach descriptive hand gestures. These don't take a lot of time to teach.
And kids get the idea. Here's a practice speech. The dog was real little, but his mouth was really big. And I had bite marks all over my arm. Well, you can visualize what kind of gestures might go with. The dog is real little, his mouth is real big, bite marks on the arm. You get a sense of what children might do with that once they're aware that they need to do something.
And sure, some kids are better at these than others. Just as some kids are better readers, better mathers. Better writers. But you're right. I have the dial and I can start moving it from nothing to a lot to where I'm [00:31:00] comfortable. But it takes these specific lessons. And any teacher listening, please don't ever grade something if you never specifically taught it.
That is so rude. All of these Peavey Lake pieces are teachable.
Ross Romano: you know? Yeah. And breaking them into these components as with. As you mentioned, with writing and reading, you can focus on one at a time, kids can be mindful of what they're trying to do and how, have some metacognition around it, okay, I'm trying to do this a little more, that doesn't feel comfortable, let me bring it back a little bit, let me, and, but I,
Erik Palmer: can I interrupt you there and piggyback off of that? Cause the mindful part is so well said. Let me give you an example, if I could. How do you teach life? Same thing. I will put up a little phrase and I will put something, I'll take volunteers. I'll put up a phrase like this. I'll write it on the board.
[00:32:00] I don't think you're dumb. And I'll say to somebody, I really feel like I've been making a lot of mistakes lately. Can someone say this to me so that I really get it? And kids will think about it and then someone will go, I don't think you're dumb. Oh, thank you. Thank you, I feel better. Because I was feeling bad about myself.
But wait, can someone take these exact same words, but just with different life, so I get the idea that while you don't think I'm dumb, Everybody else does. And kids will think about it for a minute and then someone will volunteer, I don't think you're dumb. Ooh, but everyone else does. And I'll say, all right let's do one more.
How about, can you say these words? So while I get the idea, I'm not dumb, there's something else wrong with me. Kids will think about it and someone will say, I don't think you're dumb. Oh, one more, one more. Can you say these exact same words with different life. So I get the idea, you think I'm an idiot.
And kids will pause a minute and then someone will [00:33:00] say, I don't think you're dumb. So we get the idea that life matters. Now, they're aware of it, it's the metacognitive thing that you talk about. And I say we're generally not trying to change meaning, we're trying to make something more interesting.
There's a difference between 800 million people are starving on our planet and 800 million people are starving on our planet. And I'm not okay with that, and I think you get that from the life in my voice. And kids will struggle to put it in play. As they're becoming aware of it, as they're getting the metacognitive skills, you'll see kids that just hammer one word, because they know that should be a lively word.
He couldn't believe that that's what they were going to do. I like it, you got the idea. You've got the concept, you're moving the dial, you're aware of life and you know you need to add it. Maybe that wasn't the right place to add it, but it's exactly what you were saying. It's the metacognitive awareness.
of what it takes to be better [00:34:00] and now they can work on it.
Ross Romano: that whole exercise and illustration there lies on that starting point of going back to the beginning, right? Knowing what you want to communicate. What do these words mean? What is it supposed to make people think or feel? How do I need to emphasize that? A great exercise for that. You know, and it's an example of the more practice you have, but I've noticed it in recent years reading aloud children's books.
And sometimes you're reading it aloud for the first time and you read through a page and you say, wait a second, that's not right. You know, I put the emphasis on the wrong parts because I hadn't read this before and I didn't realize what it was trying to say until after I read it and said, okay. Let me do that again but the same thing these are things that kids could be thinking about.
Okay, did this make the point it was meant to make? What is this really saying that it's a lot more than about what the words [00:35:00] are and what they literally mean, but it's what. They communicate and being effective and and a lot of this too I mean, I guess developing the confidence level in one's own ability to speak that word effective is important because it's effective, not good or bad.
It's not objective that everybody, it depends on that audience, the audience you identify, and the audience that identifies you, right? It's a two sided process of me determining as the speaker, who is the audience that I want to be communicating with, but also that audience making the decision of, is this a person that I want to hear from?
Is this a source that is relevant to me? And As the speaker trying to get on the wavelength of what is an effective way of communicating to these people, there might be other people that are not my [00:36:00] audience that think I'm a terrible speaker that can't stand to listen to me. Well, that's okay, because that's not my audience.
And then vice versa. There's people that they think are wonderful that I wouldn't really get much out of.
Erik Palmer: That's so well said because people will say, well, I don't think every child should speak formally. Notice that the framework is not formal. The framework is neutral. It works for all languages, all dialects. Think about, as you were saying, audience. I speak differently with my teammates in the dugout at a baseball game than I speak in front of the classroom.
We adjust for the audience. There's not a right way of speaking. It's what is right for that audience. What content do you put in for that audience? What life is appropriate for that audience? So, the framework is neutral. It works for all speaking, and your point is well taken. And someone else thinks, well I hated it.
[00:37:00] Doesn't matter. You weren't my target market. I'm talking right now to third graders. They loved it. If I were talking to veterinarians about pets, it's different than my third grade talk about pets. One would hate it.
Ross Romano: Yeah I want to skip, before we come back to evaluating, I think it makes sense to talk about the digital context, and this is what's new in the second version of the book, and this is, these are other forms of speaking, like podcasts, webinars, video, audio apps, all the ways that we are Using these skills, but maybe distributing that content through the different media.
It's not just the in person speaking, but what's the relevance of some of these to today's students and what are some of the ways that this that these digital media can be brought into the classroom to enhance, to build on to modernize what teaching speaking is.
Erik Palmer: Well, between the first edition and the second was an explosion of tools that showcased [00:38:00] speaking. I mean, every phone now is a FaceTime device. It's an audio recorder. It's a video recorder. There are so many different tools like Zoom, WebEx Skype. Digital speaking has exploded. And the skills needed to impress digitally are the same skills, kind of, but more.
For example, as I mentioned, the audience, yeah, it's not a class of 11th graders kind of like you. It's the world. Now, of course, if your podcast is about Picasso, not everybody in the world will look at it. But people who are interested in art, of all different ages, from all different countries, are, might be interested.
So, audience analysis becomes even bigger. Life becomes even bigger. Because a small speaker, on a small device, will diminish your voice. You won't be as impressive on a little tiny speaker on a cell phone as you are in [00:39:00] front of a classroom or as you are on stage with a big screen behind you and a microphone.
So it's still audience, content, organization, visual aids and appearance. It's still PV legs. But digitally, you need to do some things even a little more. If you were listening to someone recording a good podcast, you would think, Oh, that's over the top. They have too much life in their voice. Not by the time you hear it on the podcast.
It'll be just right. So the skills apply, but you need to be much more careful when you're using digital media.
Ross Romano: You know, yeah, and it's really truly is the reality now that anybody can communicate to anybody, anybody can find via these media through the internet be able to create content that can. anybody can access. Not that everybody will, but anybody could. And it's again, it's another illustration of the [00:40:00] benefit of getting practice repetitions, getting better, breaking through the lack of confidence that, that if, when you're not doing Good when you're not any good yet, nobody's going to notice. You have to be okay with that indifference, but if you keep going, eventually you'll find out what your voice is.
You'll figure out your thing and you'll start to get interest from the audience that you're attempting to reach. And so It's a little bit different maybe than being up in front of a crowd, but in most ways it's very similar. It's that the, for a typical speaker who has not yet honed their skillset, the Negative reaction is indifference and the positive reaction could be really positive.
Yes there's you [00:41:00] know, worse reactions possible there. There certainly is particularly for somebody who either really doesn't know their audience or who is really going in 1 direction to. Having a high level of lack of awareness of their surroundings. It can be worse than that, but I would say the biggest chunk of what a response looks like to, to a speaker who is not a super skilled speaker is most people think that didn't make any impression on me and then they don't think about it again and that's okay.
Because you may have learned something as a speaker, you got some practice and that's difficult when you're a student. Maybe you're an adolescent and you certainly have that spotlight effect feeling that everybody's really hyper attuned to what you're doing, right? So that's a challenge of teaching it.
But the reality is that once you break through that and you start to get the practice, work on those skills, try new things that it. The pathway to [00:42:00] success is there?
Erik Palmer: know, that's the fun of knowing that people think public speaking is hard. Because that means that the audience is very forgiving. Like, wow, it's really hard, and this is just a kid speaking, so we're very forgiving, and you don't really have to panic if it didn't come out like Martin Luther King, Jr. We're forgiving, we get it.
You're just learning this, you've only been introduced to PB Legs recently, but for kids You know, these digital tools make things way more interesting. Instead of getting up and saying, Well, Ross, I want you to summarize Chapter 3 and you'll give your summary to the class. Pah! Who cares? Ross, we're going to record your summary of Chapter 3.
We're going to post it on the school website. Kids from other classes, parents, grandparents, will all be able to hear your summary. What happens now when you do your summary of Chapter 3? It's going to be way better. So kids up their game also when they're given an opportunity to use digital tools,
Ross Romano: Yeah, [00:43:00] so the reason why I wanted to talk about that stuff before coming back to now evaluating that third part is because certainly there is the evaluation part, which is grading the teacher, having the rubrics that you reference before rubrics that should be comprised of the elements that students have been taught they should be working on and then helping guide students.
Towards success within that and also in particular with the availability of digital tools, opportunity for self evaluation and to listen back to what you did to think about something that's harder to do if you're just performing live and you don't have a chance, you can maybe be thinking about it in the moment, but it's not as easy to self evaluate.
But Seems like perhaps an opportunity for something that teachers could be including in their evaluation. But if you want to [00:44:00] talk through this piece, the importance of it, and of course, part of that cycle of continuing to improve is making sure that the evaluation and the feedback is specific, that it's on target, that's effective feedback.
Otherwise, if it's just a score, or the score isn't necessarily based on anything, or if I can remember. When I was in school and we did speaking, I don't think, I don't really remember what the grades and things were, but for the most part, I don't feel like the grades were based actually on the quality of the speech at all.
It was basically just giving an oral report and it was on the content of the report. It would have been the same grade if it was just handed in on paper, right? So it was kind of not necessarily an authentic. Authentic implementation of speaking. It was just, well, I guess we have to do some different things and sometimes they should present their report instead of handing it in,
Erik Palmer: Yeah. The key is that now [00:45:00] in districts who have adopted this district wide have some consistency. You'll use the same language from grade to grade. We all use the word capitalization. From class to class, grade to grade, we talk about capitalization. You don't go to one room where someone says large letters used appropriately.
Upper and lower casing, effective. Capitalization. If you use the framework, it guides your evaluation. And now we all know the terms. Hey, Ross, you do a really good job appealing to the audience. You do a really good job with content that connects with the audience. Or, you do a really good job with gestures.
We know. Probably the biggest shock that I get in the evaluation section is that I insist that students evaluate speeches. You know, not every talk. But the big presentations that you do. The biography presentation in May, where they dress up like the character from the book. Students have to score that. A talk is for the [00:46:00] audience.
I need to know if the audience got it. And so, I give them the framework. How did Ross do for audience? How did he do for content? How did he do for organization? How were his visual aids? How was his poise, his voice, his life, his icon? And the kids score it. And people are like, well that turns it into a popularity contest.
No, kids are better than that. They know what good speed is. They know what effective gestures are. They get it. Now, it doesn't mean that every child gets all fives on a five point scale. They don't. We're emerging speakers. If you got a three for life, that might be great. Three is really good for fifth graders.
We're not that, we're not good at this yet, but I absolutely insist that students score so that the speaker can get the feedback. Was I getting to the people I want to get to? If the teacher is [00:47:00] the only one grading and the kid is only looking at you during the talk, something's wrong.
Ross Romano: you know? Yeah, it's. That's an important part, right, is making them, even by the, the practice of grading, making them be attentive to what everybody else is doing, and it gives you some data points, some comparison points. really good at that. Oh, she's pretty good at this thing. Oh, I want to try that.
And if I'm not otherwise, if I'm not needing to grade that. I might not be paying super close attention to all those things, and I'm missing a learning opportunity.
Erik Palmer: And what you get is kids are going, oh my gosh, I got a two in life. That's great because last time I got a one. I'm getting better. That's what I want. I want kids to see that incremental growth, and the only way to get that feedback is if you let people be honest and tell them the truth.
Ross Romano: Excellent. So this has been a great conversation. We covered a lot [00:48:00] here. I guess as a way of sort of tying together the meat of our conversation, what would be kind of a final point to make about what Good things can happen in the classroom once teachers are able to really commit to teaching speaking in this way, to making this a critical part of the learning environment.
Once you start to see It opened up, right, going from maybe we haven't been doing that much of this, or we've been doing sort of a light version to when those light bulbs start to go on and kids start to feel like they're doing better or start to, to collaborate and engage in those ways where they're evaluating one another.
They're reflecting on the areas of their improvement. What can that look like? Maybe to a teacher who's. Still on the other end right now of kind of [00:49:00] needing a vision for what am I working toward here?
Erik Palmer: Yeah, because I've given you something else to do, right? Oh my gosh, I've got to teach speaking now? It's not like my plate was empty. And I get that. But you already have kids talking. That's already going on in your class. With some small, mini lessons, they can become better talkers. And as I mentioned earlier, you'll notice, oh my gosh, in the discussions, they've got some life in their voice.
They're looking at each other. They're not just looking at me. These discussions have come alive. And for poetry recitations, we're not suffering through 32 of these. Okay, next kid. Oh my gosh, these poems came alive. Instead of kids hating poetry, they're starting to love poetry. And in Read Aloud, I didn't know reading could be this much fun.
If you actually put the voices in there, and put the life in there, these stories come alive. So [00:50:00] as I said, everything in your class improves. Everything. You are suffering now more than you need to. Because year after year, if you listen with new ears, those presentations are pretty dull. And if you play the podcast that you recorded, it's really hard to get to the end of the second minute.
Because it's so dull. Every one of these things gets better. But skip all of that. Remember that it is the number one language art. There's nothing you will teach that will be used more in any student's life than speaking.
Ross Romano: Yeah, well, yeah, that's that's a good selling point there. That's there's a lot of truth in that. So listeners, we'll put the links below to Eric's website, pvlegs. com, and to the page where you can buy the book. You can also find it wherever you get your books, but Eric, is there anything in particular either on your website or elsewhere that listeners should really check out?
Erik Palmer: As you know, I'm happy where you've [00:51:00] pointed them to. Remember that pvlegs. com is real. That actually is the website and you'll see rubrics on there and lesson ideas and mini lessons and little speeches. So there are a lot of tools out there and I really thank everyone for committing to giving every child an effective voice.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, listeners, check all that out. We'll put the links below. Again, the book is Well Spoken, Teaching Speaking to All Students. It's the second edition. So, put the link where you can get that from Rutledge, but you can also find it wherever you get your books. You can head over to Eric's website.
You can learn about all of his other books, others on Well Spoken. very similar topics to this one and a variety of others there. So check all of that out. Please do also subscribe to the authority if you have not already. We'll keep bringing you great conversations every week with a number of wonderful guests we have coming up here.
So we will continue to [00:52:00] deliver that for you, or you can visit thepodcast. network to learn about all of our shows. If you like this one, There's certainly something else there you'll like. So please check all of that out. And Eric, thanks again for being here.
Erik Palmer: My pleasure. Thank you, Ross.
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