Jim Richardson has been teaching for thirty years.
Since June 1997, Jim returned to college part time to improve his computer skills "so I could leap ten years forward into the present!"

Having newly seen things from the student viewpoint, Jim will attempt an experiment: as comedy has a lot to do with buried anger erupting to the surface with the volcanic force of massive paranoia--

• this document will be from the ivory tower optimism of the noble teacher.
• conversely, Jim's "College and University Students" document will address the angry student's point-of-view
• As teacher and student are complementary functions, both of which everyone must serve during any lifetime.

Jim invites you to compare/contrast these "opposing" viewpoints
How?
By rooting out those deadly speaking techniques that make your listeners involuntarily turn a deaf ear to your message.

• Instead of unconsciously talking down to your audience, stop being afraid of your students: find new ways to interact with students that greatly enhance their learning
• The first semester you taught, stumble as you may, you were a very popular teacher on that campus
  Why?
  Because only a few months before you were a student.
  So, you were still fully in touch with the student's needs and anxieties. Jim also had this joyful experience during his first semester teaching. When Jim related his realization to his Ph. D. adviser, Jim was cautioned, "Hold onto that feeling--it's the first thing that goes!"
  • From the podium, Jim will run you through some simple exercises that will help you return to thinking like your student audience
    Why?
    So you can return to reaching your students where they really live, deep down in their souls

When people laugh at your humor, they are involuntarily agreeing with your message

• How many funny teachers do you know?
  • Are you like Jim, and remember when humor used to be a common tool used by the classroom teacher?
  • Are you ready to do your part, and bring back the truly "good old days"?
• We can spend just one day cementing in your self- discovery so you will be able to spontaneously act from your new perspective

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• Whether or not you are comfortable with students in the controlled atmosphere of your office or laboratory or rehearsal hall, you change as soon as you are in front of a class
• The audience throws you off, and you become too "school-teacher-y":
  • Death with audiences.
  • But an easy and fun fix!

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If you don't want to think of a memorable but very short line of poetry as being "a joke, an advertising slogan, a jingle or a sound bite," ok.
In your head, you can be using academic, lofty language to filter Jim's nuts and bolts description.
Why not? It's there.
Call them "pithy statements."
Tell everyone you are quoting another pithy statement from a famous author, or use your own original material.
Why not?
Great literature is full of pithy statements. That's why people can't help themselves: they've been quoting these great lines for years.
Jim will meet you half-way.
Something rashly rebellious in Jim makes him want to call them sound bites.
Mostly because it exposes the TV news commentators who hypocritically pretend they would never use sound bites. In fact, such denial is one of their favorite sound bites.
But enough of irony.
What, specifically, is a sound bite?

How can sound bites help close the "sale" of your each and every lecture?
Sound bites are crucial:

• Tired of all those endless back-biting faculty meetings you have to attend? Often they are worse than the worst lecture you have ever heard. Be honest: how many times did you just want to get them over fast, fast, fast?
• Well, how do you think your long-suffering student audience sees life in the classroom? There is a better way:
  • Try sound bite messages that burn
  • Get your message across in under 12 seconds
    • Full comprehension forces listeners into immediate action: students getting their homework done right and ahead of schedule!!!
    • Control:
      • how students order their priorities
      • how your character is perceived
      • what actions your students must take next

On the world wide web's superhighway, the future is NOW, and information is POWER

• Open up your classroom on Main Street in the global village
• The fastest way that your web site can grab the world's limited attention span?
  • Sound bites
  • Score major points and improve learning now.
    Be a winner on the universal fast track of the "Information Age"
  • The most memorable sound bites use HUMOR

Jim will show you how to add the warmth that wins over listeners: the long-lost art of "making love" to your audience

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Since 1980, Jim has been teaching short courses from 1-6 meetings long. The major difference between this approach to teaching and the traditional 12-16 week semester classes Jim taught from 1974-1983 is the intensity:

• Since 1960, when he was a college student, Jim noticed that he could focus more and learn much more in three week, daily summer courses
• Once/week six week courses that an instructor teaches 4-30 times a year are something of a compromise between said summer short courses and semester length courses
• But full or half day programs are a relatively new evolution in teaching that are a breed apart
  • Some are taught at:
    • College evening or extension programs, sort of the bush league version
    • Business training sessions are definitely the major leagues, featuring star players expected to hit a home run out of the ball park at every session

Instead of delivering a lecture 1-3 times a year or a short course 4-30 times a year, the well-marketed Trainer does his or her "act" 150 times a year:

• We are now talking a level of intensity beginning to become comparable to that of a stand-up comic
  • Opening and closing minutes are memorized and staged
  • Improvisations is allowed about 20 minutes into the act
  • Modes of teaching are switched every 20 minutes to hold audience attention
  • Breaks are taken every hour to maximize audience concentration

The next and final level for this kind of POWER TEACHING is the coveted role of the Keynote Speaker who, like the Trainer:

• Works 150 times a year, traveling from convention-to-convention

• Augments their 20-90 minute keynote speech with 1-6 hour half day programs
• At each venue, makes 5-10 times more money
• Has achieved and in many ways surpassed the performing skills of the universally respected stand-up comics
  • The Keynote Speaker can deal with any heckler that tries to interrupt the dinner speech because it has had too much to drink; unlike the stand-up comic, the Speaker cannot afford to offend said heckler, but must still render the heckler silent
  • Speakers must be able to handle serious subject matter with taste and authority
  • Delivery, acting and writing must all be world-class

More importantly, these Keynote Speakers with their densely packed messages will be sought-after performers, well-practiced in the ideal format to exploit the upcoming Information Age:

• Internet bandwidth problems will be licked between the middle and end of this year by the Universal Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL)
  

Soon on the heels of this evolution will be the power to upload and download video files that can finally achieve the elusive 30 frames/second speed necessary to avoid jerkiness

• Overnight, every home will become its own television station broadcasting to the world market
• Considering how fragmented the TV viewing audience has been made by the existence of 50-plus cable stations, imagine the competing demands millions of TV stations will create for high visibility!
• On-the-air time will be at its highest premium yet
• Students will demand and get instructors to make multi- media versions of their lectures, accessible 24 hours a day from the Internet
• Students will demand and get personal one-on-one training, if and when they desire same
• Students will demand and get those few teachers who can match the requirements of the new times
• Those teachers who refuse to adjust will find their careers have the same meager value as old computers and the materials gathered from closed schools: all will be useful only as landfill!
• In the new Information Age, teachers themselves must learn or die!

Jim has not only seen this new teaching module coming way ahead of time, he has lived it with his students, his clients and in his own presentations. Jim is in an unique position to:

• Share his knowledge and help prepare you for the demands of POWER TEACHING
  Note: Jim wrote this web page in Spring 1998, targeting college instructors.
  From September 1999-June 2000, Jim conducted an experiment —bringing local area high school parents instant access to their children's grades online and emailing parent's regarding their children's behavioral problems same-day (several student's academic lives were instantly saved!); then half a decade later, on April 14, 2003, Apple Computers announced a comprehensive K-12 application which incorporates these features: http://www.apple.com/education/powerschool/
• Warn you of common pitfalls by showing you breaks in the railing where careers have fallen into the deep canyons of despair
• Use his theater-comedy-speaker coach's "third eye" to help you see the things about yourself you can't see, anymore than an actor can see his own performance as it unfolds before the audience:
  • discover your strengths
  • identify and immediately begin the long process of shoring up your weaknesses

In the era of choose or lose, your best guide is Jim Richardson

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Jim complements your formal teacher training

Years of training actors, stand-up comics and business speakers in motivational analysis has sharpened Jim's intuitive edge.
While you are trying to figure out the metaphor to employ in your next teaching presentation, Jim will focus his attention on your student audience's sensibilities.

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Audio clips from Jim's Talks

Jim will be updating this section constantly from his current speeches, beginning Tuesday, 06-Jun-2023 06:49:22 PDT .
If you would like to listen to Jim's newest audio clips right here on this web page, just as soon as they are available, then please get on Jim's e-mail list at: jim@jimrichardson.com
Jim's brochure, audio and video demo tape are available upon request.

These two audio clips are from Jim's talk to the Menlo Park Rotary Club in Menlo Park, California. Jim adds some notes to supplement each audio clip to help the reader better follow Jim's argument:

1. Jim how to use humor to:
   • Keep your job
   • Survive bad dates
   • Get children to automatically agree with your point-of-view

   "Bosses, Dates and New Moms"

   Are you starting to feel the pressure from resistant students, starting to get burned out?
   Stress is often caused when we are pulled in too many directions at once. Like trying to hold back a team of wild horses who are all going off in different directions.
   Jim's techniques help you regain control, get those horses pulling in the same direction.
   Thinking metaphorically, you can use all the techniques Jim talks about on this audio clip; today, begin to:
   • compel your students to willingly follow through on assignments
   • prepare for the demands of future Internet teaching, new ways to reach your students
   • get people in your personal life to agree with you
   Do it right, and they will have no choice.
   Now, that's power!
   (Please use this information responsibly.)
   Thinking humorously to convince everyone you are right!
   (audio 422 K ".wave" file, playing time: 1 minutes, 46 seconds)
   
   

2. Audio clip begins in mid-discussion, Jim proving to the audience that the number one complaint about doctors: "Doctors don't listen!"

   "How Better Listening Cures Patients Faster"

   The first step in getting folks to come around to your way of thinking is getting them to trust you as much as they trust their family doctor.
   (Assuming your family doctor is trustworthy.) How patients see the doctor during their examination
   is the same way students and professors initially see you
   (audio 488 K ".wave" file, playing time: 1 minutes, 52 seconds)

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   Frequently Asked Questions

   Q: "What do all audiences have in common that I need to know in order to improve my lectures?"
   A: Lack of acknowledgment. People want to know when they've done something right, accidentally on purpose. The greatest teacher of all is emotional reinforcement.
   Jim can show you how to capitalize on these golden moments. Golden because these moments can be used to help your students really see the value of true learning.

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