Over the summer, I prepared and delivered a few talks to athletic directors and school leaders at classical liberal arts charter schools. The Barney Charter School Initiative was filming segments of many of these talks in a studio throughout the week, which meant wearing a mic, makeup—the whole ordeal. Being filmed by a multi-person camera crew, taking instructions on which camera to look at and not look at, and doing all of this on a “set” was totally new to me, and it’s something I never could have done a few years ago. Like, not even attempted, much less attempted poorly.
Even now, I thought I was doing a horrible job as I was going through it. I felt like I was rushing it, I hated my chalk handwriting, and when I tried to wrap up with some sort of concise conclusion, I froze, then rambled.. in the end I just kept going, trusting they would cut and paste what I was stumbling through into something coherent, but I honestly felt like the whole bit was borderline unusable.
This was filmed directly after giving the same address to a live audience, which lasted 90 minutes (counting roughly 10 minutes of Q&A). Taking the same material and aiming for under 15 minutes was quite a leap, but that’s exactly the sort of math and timing calculations teachers make every period, every day. I’m consistently shocked by how good at making the lesson fit the time veteran teachers are—it’s definitely one of those acquired skills you wouldn’t notice you have without being able to vividly recall how bad you were at time management in your early years of teaching.
The BCSI crew has spent the past few months editing these clips, among other things, and the first batch were released this week. I’m glad I was able to step up to the plate and put up a decent at-bat. If it looks like I reached base safely, it’s only because of the skill of the camera crew and film editors (and makeup—gamechanger!).
Now that I have one take under my belt, I’m eager to analyze, critique, and strategize for the next time!
Here’s the clip: A Classical Approach to Athletic Directorship.
