EMBODYING THE MESSAGE: Engineers play around with expanding vocal and physical range

"INCREASING YOUR ACADEMIC & PROFESSIONAL SPEAKING SKILLS USING IMPROVISATION," OCTOBER 15th, 2016 WORKSHOP. Ta dah! Here are some of the 28 participants at the conclusion of a 5-hour workshop on a Georgia Tech game day Saturday. An exciting odyssey of expression was traveled in this short intense gathering of graduate engineering students!

Whether you are a scientist or artist, lawyer or educator, performer or poet, administrator or physician, you can benefit from a more fully embodied engagement to your life. -Celeste Snowber

How might engineers begin to enjoy communicating their ideas to colleagues, professional audiences, and the world at large? The typical stereotype of the engineer is of a person far more engaged in the head, mining the mechanics of algorithms and linear thinking slumped over a computer than that of one who inhabits a "body," reveling in spatial creative thinking and wanting to physically interact with a curious public. End result? These engineers are not only miserable when they have to present their research, but they are also judged as POOR communicators.

What are the possibilities for these engineers to communicate more successfully and with passion once they are given some improvisational tools? What if engineers were to "open" to their own life stories, gestures, and "bodily" understandings? What might they create or co-create? How differently might they express themselves personally and professionally?

GREETED BY BUZZ, THE GT MASCOT. Our 5-hour workshop convened on a football game day in the Mechanical Engineering building. The campus was abuzz with football fans barbecuing under trees around academic buildings and in parking lots filled with recreation vehicles. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

What do I mean by "bodily" understandings? Celeste Snowber in her book, Embodied Inquiry, expresses the concept this way: "A return to celebration of our physicality awakens the juices of a creative life. Life in and of itself is an art form and living artfully and aesthetically is central to being responsive to a life. The body in all of its fullness is a gift that allows us to walk, run, flop and fall along the journey that is set before us." 

Let me restate this concept in my own words based on my experience of teaching international graduate students at Georgia Tech for two decades, being a visual artist, and certified leader in the improvisational system of InterPlay. The parameters of communicating effectively does not begin and end when it is time to present research results to colleagues, potential employers, or lay people. Effective communication is an outcome of a life fully engaged in physically, mentally, and emotionally. That is, what you are, you communicate.

If we want our engineers, biologists, physicists, etc., to inform us about their deeply complex ideas and outcomes, we educators must assist them in becoming more fully human. We can invite them to integrate their "head" with their "bodies" and "hearts." This integration can be achieved in playful incremental steps!

An example of what these incremental steps might look like can be seen in the Saturday, October 15th workshop I facilitated on the Georgia Tech campus for graduate students in Materials Science Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Convening from 9:30 to 2:30 with breakfast and lunch included, we did the following:

1. Warmed up by doing InterPlay physical exercises to Jami Sieber music
2. Played around with saying our names using vocal variation (speed, rhythm and pitch) and physical actions
2. Developed rapport by leading and following intervals
3. Told nonlinear stories in 30-second and 1-minute intervals, implementing physicality and emotions (enthusiasm)
4. Embodied some of the six skills of English rhythm and intonation (pausing, linking, stress, reduction, focus, and rising/falling intonation.
5. Walked out the rhythm of a poem (student led)
6. Practiced embodied intonation in the improvisational activity, "Yes, and..."
7. Integrated physicality, English rhythm and intonation, and emotions in a big body story explaining research to a lay person
8. Practiced summarizing ideas and increasing physicality
9. Played kazoos to experience the heft of breath of intonation using the GT Fight Song and have conversations  

DEVELOPING RAPPORT. Through a series of leading and following exercises, participants had the opportunity to connect with different participants while embodying creative choices of their own and that of their partner's. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

EMBODYING THE RHYTHM OF THEIR SPEECH. Both native and nonnative speakers of English participated in this graduate science communication workshop. Everyone was asked to prepare a 150-200 word paragraph explaining their research to a lay person. Here they are applying the rhythm and intonation skills presented earlier in the workshop in a "solo" walk around the room. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

GAINING CONFIDENCE AND INCREASING EXPRESSIVENESS. In incremental steps, these researchers decreased their reliance on written text. They moved from reading their paragraph, to "just saying" it, to reducing it to 3 sentences, and finally to one sentence while networking and meeting each other. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

This improvisational workshop using the tools and principles of InterPlay succeeded in physically enaging these engineering graduate students from the United States, Iran, Peru, Colombia, Korea, China, Vietnam, and Brazil. Some noticed feeling awkward and challenged. Some experienced release from stress. Others enjoyed connecting with classmates they never have a chance to talk with on a day-to-day basis. Two students, one from Iran and another from Colombia, discovered they did similar research and sat down immediately after the workshop for a deeper discussion. Students from the United States had the opportunity to be with international students in a different way and to confront their own challenges of communicating in English. The feedback that brought me the greatest joy? One Korean student approached me before he left to express a relief at being invited to play! I had informed everyone that I was a "recovering serious person." He said he would like to be one too!

IMPRESSIVE BUILDINGS FOR ENGINEERS ON THE GEORGIA TECH CAMPUS. It was such a pleasure to be invited into this engineering complex on the GT campus to assist these scholars in building their communication skills and encourage them to engage more fully in their lives as a way to enhance their effectiveness and joy. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I am happily grateful to Celeste Snowber, who I just discovered, and her most recent book, "Embodied Inquiry: Writing, Living, and Being through the Body." Part of the wider InterPlay community, Celeste is a dancer, writer, poet, and educator at Simon Fraser University, B.C., Canada, where she is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education. As usual, I am forever thankful to co-founders Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry for the improvisational system of InterPlay and how they facilitate friendships and collaboration among national and international InterPlay communities. It is with deep gratitude I acknowledge Karen Tucker, director of the Georgia Tech Language Institute, for her dedication to expand her understanding of ways we might communicate and hence the LI's programming across the GT campus. Many thanks to Amanda Gable (MSE) and Jeffrey Donnell (ME) who facilitated this improv workshop for their graduate students. And thank you Tony Martin for being my driver and relieving me from the worry of driving on a GT football game day.

REVERB10: HOSANNA NEXT HALLELUJAH: NAMING MYSELF

Hello PILGRIMS! Let me re-introduce myself. My name is Hallelujah Truth, pronounced “HOWWWWWWWL-a-LUUUUU-YAH! TRUUUUUUUUUUTH”! I wear this self-adorned name like a BLAZING GOLDEN CROWN of RED FLOWERS.

Two years ago I discovered my new moniker, HALLELUJAH TRUTH, after fatigue with my mono-syllabic given name, “Ruth.” Isn’t LIFE too short to have a one-syllable name that begins and ends with hard to say consonants “R” and “TH”? My international students have massacred my given name, “Ruth,” for more than 20 years. From their mouths, “Ruth” emerges in various forms of LOOSE and RUSE. Occasionally, the beautiful vowel, “U,” (which sounds like ewww…) gets mangled and is produced as a shorter, lesser magnificent vowel, creating a name like ROTH. Some speakers even get creative and call me a similar sounding but easier to say name like BRUCE. One Russian speaker just shook his head and said, “I will call you HOOFIA.”

As a result of these variations of “Ruth,” I begin teaching students my name by saying, “I am called RUTH like TRUTH.” I would strive to get them to call me “Ruth” accurately with additional encouraging words: “If you greet me by my name “Ruth” every day, when it comes time to express your opinion about something, you will be able to say, ‘I THink so, instead of I Sink so’”! Perhaps these small matters of an interdental fricative (th) only matter to teacher of English as a second language!

Over time, RUTH like TRUTH got shortened to RUTHTRUTH—a very dogmatic name. My friends began to spur me on to speak bluntly, giving the appearance of speaking the TRUTH. Although I had acquired a second syllable to my singularly syllabled name, RUTHTRUTH was not FUN! Nor was this name CELEBRATORY.

WORDS MATTER! Think about this causal chain: THOUGHTàWORDàDEEDà? A quotation attributed to Ralph Waldo Emmerson answers my question:

“Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Character is everything.”

As I explored possibilities of new multi-syllabic musical names, I tried on many ending in the syllable “UH”—Hannah, Annabella, Isabella, Estrella, Carmella. Then I stumbled on Hosanna—it had symbolic meaning—an exclamation of praise or adoration. But I found the “N’s” were too hard on my tongue as it stopped on the back of my upper teeth—HOSANNA. Next, HALLELUJAH popped out magically. I sucked in a really big breath! The possibility of claiming a word, which means “a joyful word of praise to God”, frightened me. After all, respecting the GREAT MYSTERY is part of my heart and soul.

Could I use HALLELUJAH as my new name, summoning its common usage as an expression of happiness—a positive exclamation? YES. DEFINITELY! HALLELUJAH gradually grew attached to my given name now embedded in the TRUTH!

HALLELUJAH TRUTH! Thought becomes words (Hallelujah Truth)! What deeds will come from these words: Hallelujah Truth? What character? For now, I use my name Hallelujah Truth for signing my artwork and writing on my blog, “Coffee with Hallelujah.” Occasionally, when one of my students has trouble saying “Ruth,” I will offer “Hallelujah” as an alternative! And the syllables of Hallelujah dance off their tongues as they repeat it more than once. Soon a swarm of students are laughing and singing praises to me by saying, “Hallelujah.” What a triumphant name. I will keep this name for now. It suits me.

Keep Soul Blogging with Hallelujah Truth. Tell me about YOUR JOURNEY and what new name you will give yourself!

OH, and here is December 23’s REVERB10 PROMPT: New Name. Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?