Nwenna Kai is a professor at the Community College of Philadelphia and is a multi-genre writer whose poetry, creative nonfiction, and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications.
The quote “Be the change you want to see in the world” is largely attributed to the anticolonial activist, lawyer, and politician Mahatma Gandhi. While Gandhi didn’t say these exact words, the context and theme of the quote is prevalent in most of his writings.
I largely have lived my life from this context, particularly in the public speaking classroom. Compassion, understanding, empathy, and especially kindness in the face of disagreement reflect my teaching style and approach to knowledge. I also embody this love for justice. Because of those two ideals, in my speech classes I use the work of social justice to teach students how to disagree respectfully and have open and healthy dialogue about pressing issues that impact our world.
To build these foundational skills in my public speaking class, I help my students learn how to challenge the dominant narratives around social issues; how to research effectively to educate, inform, and persuade; and how to tell a great story to capture and engage the audience. This is why I use W. W. Norton’s Contemporary Public Speaking by Pat Gehrke and Megan Foley in my public speaking classes. The pretty brown girl with glasses and pigtails [on the First Edition cover] spoke volumes about the concepts covered, which equally aligned with my own value system.
Navigating Dominant Narratives
When we approach informative and persuasive speeches, students grapple with how to challenge dominant narratives. I always use a verifiable example of a student I had in my class, a White male in his thirties who delivered a persuasive speech about why women should not be paid equally to men and how that student had to grapple with the politically correct narrative that equality in pay should be honored in the workplace. In class, we discussed the fact that the student’s audience was about 70% women, women of color, and younger women who were probably closer to the modern-era women’s movement than women some decades older. We discussed the different appeals that the student used to try and persuade the audience to adopt his position on the topic. We discussed tone, eye contact, visuals, etc. But we also discussed the qualities of being compassionate, kind, and empathic as a speaker. While students—mostly female—and some males still pushed back on how effectively this speaker presented his position, that example teaches us how to seek understanding on social justice issues despite disagreement and dissent. In Chapter 12 of the Contemporary Public Speaking text, there are examples of other narratives that challenge the dominant narratives. When I show the video of Jordan Raskopoulos’s TED Talk about living with high-functioning anxiety, students are often confused by Jordan’s deep voice and dress when I refer to Jordan as she/her, in addition to the fact that one way Jordan deals with anxiety is to be on stage talking about it.
Brainstorming and Researching Topics
Before students thoroughly research their topics, we do a deep dive into what they want to inform and then persuade their audience about. For the sake of the assignment, students are allowed to write their speeches on the same topic for the informative and persuasive speeches, with the persuasive speeches having a position on the topic.
So, we start with students listing different social justice topics on the board. I ask students to name some topics that are concerning, particularly relevant, or in the current news cycle. Usually, climate change and global warming are the first topics they offer. However, they follow those up with topics like prison reform, healthcare, LBGTQ rights, and human trafficking. Then, students get in groups and brainstorm on listing subtopics of the broader topics so that we can narrow the focus. Students often will use Google, or they will collaborate on hammering out subtopics.
After our brainstorming session, we visit the library to learn how to effectively navigate the library’s databases to conduct research. In addition to our library visit, we use Chapter 8: “Research and Citation” from Contemporary Public Speaking to develop a research plan. I point students to the “Learn More” tutorials from Chapter 8, such as the JStor and Academic Search Complete videos, as I prefer that students use academic articles to start their research plans.
Research is strongly emphasized with the informative and persuasive speeches in my classroom, because we now live in a world where we aren’t quite sure of what we are seeing, hearing, or reading. With deepfakes, AI, fake news, etc., we must learn how to be thorough and in-depth researchers if we are going to be social justice warriors. We must learn how to challenge the dominant and often very loud narratives with facts, examples, anecdotes, case studies, and statistics. We must learn how to evaluate sources and question the biases. We must learn how to integrate the evidence in the right places for the most impact on our audience, and we must learn how to couple images with our research so that our audience is engaged, listening intently, and learning.
Developing Presentation Aids
After our library session, students come back to the classroom to learn how to put all this together. We discuss the content of their speeches and the best ways to use visuals. I show clips from comedian and actor John Leguizamo’s one-man Broadway show, Latin History for Morons on Netflix (the chapter opener for Chapter 13: “Presentation Aids and Slides”), to discuss how to effectively use visuals and how to think outside the box when it comes to presentation aids. I don’t want students to think they have to resort to using PowerPoints, or Google slides, especially because technology sometimes fails and we have to improvise as public speakers. Technology also isn’t as universally accessible as we may think, which brings up other conversations about injustice, accessibility, and technology. Students learn how to visually create aids in their presentations using the universal design principles from Chapter 13. After we view and discuss Leguizamo, we have a conversation about comedy and trigger warnings, being politically correct, and offending certain groups of people. We can go down the rabbit hole with that one, but we move through the conversation using the pillars of compassion, empathy, understanding, and kindness.
Audience Analysis
In our next class, we discuss the basics of outlining and transitioning from idea to idea, always keeping the audience in mind. Students also do an audience analysis to survey their peers and myself about their topics. I put three questions on the board for them to ask their peer groups:
- What do they already know about the topic?
- What do they want to know?
- How does the topic relate to them, if at all?
In Chapter 5 of the textbook, students learn how to tap into and understand the audience’s values, attitudes, and behaviors. They learn the difference between asking open-ended and close-ended questions and how to ask for more details with follow-up questions. For the persuasive topic, the audience analysis is where students must practice understanding when faced with opposing positions on their topic. Students will ask their peers, “What are your concerns about my position on this topic?” For example, “What are your concerns if I feel like women should be paid less money than men?” Try asking that to your peer group of young women of color as a young White male. After the peers state their concerns, the speaker would then ask, “How could I solve your concerns?” Through this process, students learn the art and science of persuasion. They learn that people are mostly persuaded when their concerns are solved. They also learn how a person, even with a disconcerting viewpoint, still deserves respect and listening space.
Telling an Engaging Story
After our audience analysis sessions, students learn how to tell a great story, a hallmark of persuasive speaking. Great stories include a beginning, middle, and end, and there is always a resolution at the end. Great stories have rich and vibrant characters and a hero who overcomes something and wins. Students learn how to apply these qualities to their speeches. Great stories also humanize our social justice topics. When we can attach current issues to human faces and stories, we can see and feel those issues more. We can relate to them, and we can empathize with them.
I ask my students to put a face on the topic of climate change. Put a face on the issue of human trafficking, the minimum wage argument, the issue of funding higher education, prison reform. Let’s see how stories transform the dominant narratives, and let’s see how they can transform our worlds.
Public speaking can be a powerful tool if we use it effectively. In a world of polarizing podcasts, influencers, deepfakes, fake news, sound bites, and other frivolous ways of distributing content, we can challenge our viewpoints, research thoroughly, and tell great stories. We can be the change we want to see in the world, although we may disagree.
Ready to explore Contemporary Public Speaking for yourself? Start here: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/conpubspeak2.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Nwenna Kai is a professor at the Community College of Philadelphia and is a multi-genre writer whose poetry, creative nonfiction, and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications. Her work has been featured in Solstice: A Magazine for Diverse Voices; Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora; Aji Magazine; Tipton Journal; The West Trade Review;andIksei: A Carefully Curated Anthology of Haikus. Nwenna’s creative nonfiction has appeared in Heart and Soul Magazine,Sacred Fire: The Power of the First Element to Change Your Life, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and her short fiction has appeared in midnight & indigo.