\n
Becoming an \u201caccidental educator\u201d<\/h5>\n
A little bit about me, I admire educators so much; in fact, I went to a tiny little college in a cornfield in Pennsylvania, a little catholic university in the eastern United States. I was a theatre major. But I was about to quit being a theatre major because I thought, \u201cThis is cool and this is fun, but this isn\u2019t a way a human being can make a living, this is a strange thing to do with your life.\u201d And what I was going to do was quit and become a teacher! That was my honest intention. But just as I was about to do that, I won a national acting award \u2013 because of that, there was a little flurry of interest in me in New York City as an actor; I had an agent and a manager and my girlfriend at the time said, \u201cYou\u2019re an idiot. You should at least go try that before you quit acting. The rest of us are still trying to get agents \u2013 you\u2019re ahead of the game!\u201d So I went to New York City to be a very gritty actor. To be Al Pacino, to be Dustin Hoffman, to be a little dangerous, gritty actor.<\/p>\n
I think Blue\u2019s Clues was my second audition \u2013 I was immediately this \u201cSteve\u201d guy. I thought it was going to be a voice audition, to be the voice of a cartoon. I don\u2019t know if I even would\u2019ve gone to the audition if I had known it was going to be this host of a kid\u2019s show; I never in a million years expected or anticipated being on a children\u2019s television show. So when I went to the audition and there was a camera in the room, I thought\u2026 \u201cOh boy\u2026 I better do something.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I looked at the script and it was like a game show, and I said \u201cNo no, I am going to act the hell out of this. I am going to Dustin Hoffman this script.\u201d So I made it this really personal thing, approaching and talking to the camera like we were buddies \u2013 like it was a conspiratorial or parenthetical moment between us. So I made it this personal relationship \u2013 I didn\u2019t think that would work, but they showed it to kids, and they freaked out and lost their minds, and suddenly Blue\u2019s Clues took off.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s why I\u2019m telling you all that. I immediately realized that my role on that show while I was acting it, I was actually an educator. Blue\u2019s Clues was brilliantly conceived\u2014Angela Santomero, Traci Johnson, the people who created Blue\u2019s Clues, brilliant, brilliant people\u2014every beat of that show, every moment of that show: the repetition, the way that it is an homage to Fred Rogers, the way that it is structured, it\u2019s all a brilliant curriculum. That\u2019s what Blue\u2019s Clues was, a curriculum for preschoolers, and my real job was to facilitate that curriculum. Which made me think, \u201cOh! Now I\u2019m an educator. Accidentally.\u201d But I felt really weird about it because I hadn\u2019t studied education, I wasn\u2019t a child development specialist; I wasn\u2019t a teacher, but my job now was to teach, was to educate, was to facilitate this curriculum. And I felt totally underqualified. I used to say all the time, \u201cThis is great, and I\u2019m glad it\u2019s so successful \u2013 but don\u2019t you think this should be a teacher doing this? Don\u2019t you think it should be a child development specialist, or an educator doing this?\u201d So I always felt wrong-footed and miscast in that role.<\/p>\n
The Teacher\/Entertainer connection <\/h5>\n
So, flash forward to now, and the same thing is happening to you. You\u2019re an educator, and now they\u2019re saying to you, \u201cBe entertaining through this lens. Be compelling, hold attention, develop attention. Lead. Teach.\u201d Do the interpersonal thing this way \u2013 through the screen. So just as I was an accidental educator, now you guys, in a way, are being asked to be accidental entertainers. I say that because of the conventions that we\u2019re using. We\u2019re using a screen and we\u2019re using a camera\u2014again, I\u2019m not a Child Development Specialist, this is just what I\u2019m assuming\u2014and it seems to me that students are highly conditioned to screens as things that entertain them. As things that they\u2019re passively entertained by. Kids have such a comfort level with technology but it doesn\u2019t seem to me, in talking to my teacher friends, that the same familiarity with technology really translates into a comfort level with the screen. So it must be so difficult to be trying to communicate with people on these really difficult levels. It’s hard to teach people things, and it must be so difficult to do that, through the screen, with people who are used to zoning out. Also the separation with the screen, it seems to me that it would create a very low-stakes environment for the student; where they can tune out, do whatever, Google answers. Their presence doesn’t include the possibility of failure the same way it does in a class, which can be super motivating.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have the answers to any of this, but I can tell you what I did. I can give you my recipe for what I call \u201cimmediacy\u201d. How can we create a sense of immediacy through this highly mediated form and environment?<\/p>\n
Holding attention with \u201cimmediacy\u201d<\/h5>\n
So, Blue\u2019s Clues was based on a lot of really compelling research out of the University of Massachusets, by this guy named Dan Anderson. What he was studying was attention, especially very young people when they watch television. There\u2019s so much attention given to it \u2013 TV has this ability to hold attention, and we were trying to figure out what that was all about. I read some of this research and one thing that he pointed out was the concept of dynamic fluctuation \u2013 that\u2019s something really loud, followed by something really quiet, then loud again; or something really bright, followed by something really dark, followed by something really bright. We know these dynamics, they work in music and media all the time. And it occurred to me, \u201cHey, I can use that as an actor. I can use those dynamics, I can use those pedals to hold attention around curricular moments.\u201d So, I based the character of Steve off Grover from Sesame Street, because he had the near\/far dynamic. Grover would be really near to the camera, and then he\u2019d be really far away, and then he\u2019d be really near. So what I did, whenever we\u2019d have these moments in Blue\u2019s Clues when I saw a clue, I would utilize these near\/far dynamic fluctuations to hold attention right when I needed to.<\/p>\n
Utilizing dynamic fluctuations<\/h5>\n
The good news is, I believe this is still kind of arresting for adults, young adults, and tweens. I think it\u2019s a good device to maintain and develop attention with a lens. And you can do that in regular conversation; you can start to make your point by fluctuating your dynamics spacially, or vocally. Another trick I would always use was just pacing. I would talk really, really, really fast, knowing eventually I was going to slow down at certain points to create emphasis and hold attention. You can imagine all the other ways you can do this \u2013 just with pausing and volume. But the real thing that I believe creates a sense of immediacy, is if you can find a way to have intentional dynamic shifts. That\u2019s a little \u201cactor-y\u201d.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if this is necessarily useful from an educational standpoint, but the fluctuations that I would use the most were a sense of wonder and a sense of vulnerability. That creates authenticity: a vulnerable moment where it approximates an actual interpersonal relationship. Another trick I would use a lot, which might help in certain moments, was \u201cstatus\u201d. I talked to the camera always as though it was one person (never a group) and in a very specific way \u2013 as if the person I was talking to was at a higher status than me. They were cooler than me, and I was always, in a way, trying to impress them. This might not necessarily apply to a student\/teacher relationship, but the effect of that creates a peer-to-peer relationship that can help generate engagement through the camera.<\/p>\n
The other thing I would do a lot was active listening. A lot of children\u2019s TV shows spoke to the camera, but what I like to think we did differently, was listen to it. So I spoke to the camera, then I would imagine a specific response, and I would do that in silence. That\u2019s not the way we\u2019re used to dealing with cameras and screens, so I think that cuts through.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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By really creating and investing in those moments in a way that feels real\u2014especially when you can\u2019t be in the same room bouncing off one another\u2014means you\u2019re creating an environment that doesn\u2019t have to feel as abstract and removed as it is. I don\u2019t know if those things are helpful or not, but that\u2019s just my little bag of tricks that I would use for Blue\u2019s Clues, and I hope that they are useful to you as an educator.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25216,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[41,28,65],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Creating Immediacy - Kami<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Creating Immediacy - Kami","description":"Watch and read along with Steve Burns from Blue's Clues as he speaks about his journey and describes his recipe for immediacy.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Creating Immediacy - Kami","og_description":"Watch and read along with Steve Burns from Blue's Clues as he speaks about his journey and describes his recipe for immediacy.","og_url":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/","og_site_name":"Kami","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kamiapp","article_published_time":"2022-02-26T05:20:03+00:00","article_modified_time":"2023-03-30T00:10:14+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1400,"height":740,"url":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Blog_Creating-Immediacy.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Kami","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@kamiapp","twitter_site":"@kamiapp","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Kami","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/"},"author":{"name":"Kami","@id":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/#\/schema\/person\/57e54d4bfe82a0fcd4875c5a82bcc25a"},"headline":"Creating Immediacy","datePublished":"2022-02-26T05:20:03+00:00","dateModified":"2023-03-30T00:10:14+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/"},"wordCount":1817,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Blog_Creating-Immediacy.png","keywords":["Kami connect","learning","Professional development"],"articleSection":["Learn"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/","url":"https:\/\/wp.kamiapp.com\/blog\/creating-immediacy\/","name":"Creating Immediacy - 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