The boyfriend was deeply interested in learning how to increase his reading speed, so when we saw a groupon for Iris Reading, we snatched it up and scheduled ourselves for the next available class.
I should've known I was in trouble when the instructor's first and feeble words were, "Um, so, um, we are going to, um lounch (did she say lunch? lounge? Oh...launch) this session to, um, make you read faster." If I had a penny for every time she inserted a conversation halter into her lecture, I could've won back all the money I paid for this session and spent it on something better.
If it sounds harsh, let me continue. She wielded the class with all the authority of a good substitute teacher at best, often trying to incorporate analogies that only confused us more. As one of (too) many examples, she was trying to expound the importance of improvement through practice, and her brilliant comparison was (and I'm quoting verbatim because I actually took this down in my notes, it was so incredulous): "When you play basketball, for instance, to get good, you have to first learn to...um....what's that called...?"
"Dribble?" a helpful voice supplied from the audience.
"No, not that," she replies thoughtfully.
"Put the ball in the basket?" suggests my bemused boyfriend, the basketball player.
"Nono," she says with confirmation in her eyes. "When you want to get good, you have to learn to play...is it called defense? Or is it OH-fence? You have to learn to do that."
(awkward silence ensues, looks of befuddlement exchanged around the room)
Later in the session, when we finished a drill and she asked us to calculate our speed in words per MINUTE, one of my classmates confusedly asked, "Wait, shouldn't we divide our speed by 2 since this was a 2-minute drill?" Her response was a resounding but utterly perplexing, 'No! Because the number of lines is the same! And then you divide the lines by the number of words. Or, no, multiply, I think." She then proceeded to have a gentle argument with him about why he was wrong when the light must've suddenly gone off in her head. She sheepishly agreed with him and chuckled awkwardly while admitting, "Math isn't my strongest point. I went to law school!" What was she trying to say? That common sense isn't a prerequisite for law students?
There might have been a few people who applied their best efforts for the full duration of the five hour class, but they are those with either superhuman interest in speed reading (to the point where they could overlook our instructor's lack of knowledge about basketball, and math, and...speed reading) or a love for bumbling, rambling adjuncts. The rest of our class became increasingly inattentive as the session progressed, especially after she fended off most questions by referring to some nebulous "later on in the session" moment, when everything would come together and make sense for us. Yeah, we're still waiting for that.
In spite of it all, I gave the class two stars because by the end of it, many of us were surprised to find that the applied strategies did actually improve our reading speed (albeit at the precious cost of comprehension, which is an impossible sacrifice in my opinion), and there were pockets of time throughout the session when we learned something of actual interest.
Ultimately, I was dismayed to find such discrepancy between my experience and those of other yelpers, and could only chalk it up to the fact that everyone else seemed to have taken the class with Paul Nowak, the brains behind the program, while I took it with one of his (seemingly) C-students. I would've loved to have taken the class with Paul instead, but there's unfortunately no way of knowing who will be assigned to teach the class. It's like a game of roulette, and I had a bad spin.
The content itself is sound, and the strategies work, but the vehicle through which that knowledge was conferred needed some serious improvement (maybe she needs to work on her...um...defense? OH-fence?). read more
