How Others Truly See You

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” - David Hume  

     You will learn a lot about yourself when someone impersonates you. The other day I had my students create short 60 second skits around how I would teach a volleyball lesson. This was to be a fun semester culminating activity for our cooperative groups in our physical education classes. They were put into groups at the beginning of the semester, the primary goal was for them to learn more about each other as regular students, while periodically competing in teams against the other groups in the class. For each activity they gained points, all leading to a winning team for the semester.
     The main purpose of this activity was to have the students perform in a non-athletic way and to equalize the varying abilities and personalities. Each group was given five minutes to prepare their skit, and as mentioned, they had 60 seconds to perform.
    Overall, the skits were funny, there were some interesting variations of me, and I learned while we usually are aware of ourselves, we don't truly understand how others perceive ourselves. I saw that I talk a lot, much more than I realized. I noticed that while I am normally calm, I can lose my temper, and even in small doses, the students remember.
     Ultimately, this was a cathartic exercise, even if inadvertent. One of my students actually said to me, "Mr. Franz, I am sorry for my impression of you. I didn't really mean it," to which I replied, "No, thank you. I really enjoyed it and can learn from it."