". . . . ?"

I've been teaching for eight years now, but never before have I lost my voice in the middle of class.  I'm not speaking—har har—figuratively here either.  One minute I'm making the rounds as my students sculpt their annotated bibliographies in groups, dispensing advice as I do, the next minute my mouth won't make words.

That's not quite right.  My mouth would've shaped words fine had my larynges not gone on strike.  You know those dreams where you try to scream but can't?  It was like that . . . only in front of a roomful of students who were staring at me like I came to class I didn't realize I was enrolled in naked and hadn't studied for the final.  I coughed to no avail.  I drank some water in vain.  I gargled to no effect.

Has this ever happened to you?  If so, what did you do?  Because to be frank, I feel like I cheated my students out of half a class.  (Not that they see it that way.) 

Comments

[Rich Puchalsky]

It wasn't neurological, right? I'm assuming not, because if so, get to a doctor right away.

[SEK]

No, not neurological. I've had a terrible cold, but I've felt better the past two days then BAM! no voice. (Actually, it was more like ahem, ahem then no voice. I cleared my throat, then it stopped working.)

[Karl Steel]

Wow. No never. I used to get spontaneous nosebleeds in low humidity conditions. I remember talking to a student, and blood just started gushing out of my nose. I'm sure the student thought I was a terrific cokehead.

[JT]

Yes, in the middle of middle school science class. So I grabbed the overhead projector and explained to the students via vis-a-vis that we were going to be practicing written communication of science instead of spoken so we could compare and contrast the two later. I didn't try to hide that my voice went out, but whatever sparked that idea in my brain deserved a prize. The best was "yelling" and the kids who were talking via overhead. ALL CAPS AND BIG LETTERS: BILLY, NO TALKING!

[SEK]

Karl, I would've played that for all it was worth . . . unless, of course, I was wearing clothes I paid money for, and, you know, wanted good evaluations instead of a great story. I do, however, have some incredible coke-and-grad-school stories, but as all them only involve me crooked-wise, I can't tell them until 1) we're in a bar or 2) I have tenure.

JT, your solution was much more elegant than mine. I won't, for the moment, reveal my "solution," as I'm on the market this year. But give me a year and I offer up a full accounting of my lameness.

[mediajunk]

Oh Gawd - I was there FIGURATIVELY just this week, teaching my comp students about signal phrases.

I began one sentence without knowing the verb required to finish it. With enough squirreliness I connected my clauses. "Convergencing" is a verb, right?

Refreshed, I began another and I found myself in the same position. Subjects and verbs wouldn't match. Prepositional phrases spilled out then dangling like the testicles of a dejected bull. Students can understand the word "commonizing", can't they?

This garbling went on for a good five minutes. Every idea that came out of my mouth began with the phrases "the idea being..." or contained the words "is when" or "because of". Shudder.

My solution: Turn my back to them and, working on the chalkboard, write out a major point - even if it's something I said ten minutes earlier. It's nice to put layout an idea in a sentence piece by piece.

And it's better that they're looking over my shoulder than staring into my fear-widened eyes.

[Aimee W]

I once had to cancel a discussion section halfway through because, even though I didn't feel that terrible, I was hacking so badly I couldn't make it through a sentence. Yes, it was as disgusting as it sounds.