Personae and Presentations

On Wednesday, I gave my intro to grad studies students the lecture on in-class presentations--the usual types, the dos and please-do-nots, and so forth.  About two-thirds of the way through the lecture, I realized that graduate student presentations often falter because the students haven't yet developed a teaching persona; that is, they put themselves in front of the classroom, naked to those other graduate student eyes (or, given the number of swing courses we have, undergraduate eyes).  And so they deliver a presentation as though their own personalities are under the microscope.  Obviously, there are other things that graduate students eventually have to learn about speaking in front of a group--how to speak from notes instead of reading from a script, how to make eye contact, how to emphasize key points. But the instructor's confidence and authority are bound up in her persona--"Professor Burstein," as opposed to "Miriam"--and that persona doesn't exist outside the classroom.   A classroom session is, in effect, a kind of play. It's all very Erving Goffman.