While I absolutely agree that Adam Schiff did a wonderful job presenting the impeachment case against the president, I must confess that I’m a little surprised at how amazed so many seem to be at how smoothly he delivered his information, the quality of his argument, and his use of audio/visual materials.
Because if you were impressed with Mr. Schiff’s performance, then I encourage you to consider the fact that thousands of public school teachers and college instructors are doing what Rep. Schiff did every, single day in their classrooms across the country. In elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and college classrooms, the nation’s teachers are researching, organizing, audio-visualizing, and testifying their tails off on a daily basis to the 90+% of the school-aged children in our country.
They are speaking extemporaneously, without written notes, using thoughtfully designed slide decks and visual materials, and weaving together research, evidence, anecdotes, and personal experiences to craft compelling lessons about their course material and the topics of the day.
Just imagine how much more those teachers could do if they, like Mr. Schiff, had dozens of highly-educated, intelligent, passionate assistants working diligently to produce their teaching materials?
Instead, their lesson plans, AV materials, elementary music props, PowerPoint decks, art projects, science lab experiments, and other resources are being “developed” while they stay late after school hours, or while they are supposedly relaxing and “unwinding” at home after a long day at school, plopped on the couch with a cat, dog, or hungry kids snuggled on their laps.
Trump’s lawyers, on the other hand, were woodenly reading from prepared texts, only occasionally looking up from their notes, to a bored, disengaged audience who kept getting up from their chairs without permission, talking to their friends, and falling asleep at their desks. And then, when they ran out of material, they just stopped their testimony let the senators go home early.
Just like a group of Teach for America recruits trying to teach subjects they never studied, to students they didn’t know, when they knew they’d only be “on the job” for a year or two.
I know who I want representing me every day in the nation’s classrooms.
