Today's episode is courtesy of the fantastic poet, Jason Snydermann.

Hang tight, and I'll be back on March 27th.

I'm Jason Snydermann.

A myth is the slowdown.

I am an unlikely person to be sitting in the host chair of a show called The Slowdown.

I am not known for being slow, or calm, or relaxed.

My natural speaking voice can be so fast that in one of my first years of teaching,

when I told a class to take out some paper and something to write with,

they just sat there staring at me, not moving at all.

After the third time, I said it.

I realized that I had been so excited and had been speaking so quickly

that my students had completely stopped understanding anything I had said.

I took a deep breath and speaking as slowly as I could bear, I said,

okay, what was the last thing I said that you understood?

When the class realized that I really wanted to know that they weren't in trouble

and that I needed their help to be a better teacher, they told me.

It was something I had said nearly five minutes earlier.

So we worked out a system where if I started getting too excited about the lesson

and sped up too fast to be understood, they would raise their hands

and I would know to slow down.

I think it's true that many teachers spend their lives teaching the lessons

that they need to learn themselves.

...