Future-proof your voice : Awareness program on Vocal health and fitness for school teachers
Presenter: Dr. Prakash Boominathan
About the Sensitization/Awareness Talk
Voice is an important aspect in communication, as it reflects the speakers’ intent, emotion, mood, and personality. Your voice is often your identity. Good vocal health and coordinated/balanced activity of the speech mechanism (breathing apparatus, voice box and organs of the mouth) help produce a good voice. Voice use may vary depending on an individual’s profession, social and recreational needs.
With today’s emphasis on effective communication in any walk of life, voice or speech problems cannot be ignored. Voice users like teachers can go through several rigors of life that often imbalances the vocal health and fitness. Often times these deficits in communication abilities are not noticed or related to one’s growth or decline in professional career. These lead to disconnects between the knowledge, aspiration and creativity of the person and the actual skill or performance in teaching, class management, student-teacher relationships, and peer relations.
‘Fitness and health’ are words often related to external appearance and physique of a person. However, it actually relates to one’s capability to perceive and adapt to the changing biological, emotional and social needs of a person in his/her chosen vocation. “Voco-ergonomics” is application of knowledge, awareness and perception of vocal strength and capabilities in a person while speaking to foster economy of physical labour, psychological ease, vocal endurance and happiness during communication.
This talk will sensitize and provide the participants with
1. Knowledge for a self-discovery about their voice production apparatus (sound box) and speaking style from a vocal health perspective
2. An attitude to help seek solutions to problems in speaking without fear or apprehension at the right time
Duration: 40 minutes
Date and Time: 15th April 2024, 330pm IST
Venue: Online – Gmeet – AM Naik School, Powai, Mumbai
Who can participate? – Teacher who is interested in introspecting and improving their speaking styles and vocal health
What to expect? – An introduction to speech mechanism and its actions, biological, environmental and personal habits that predispose voice impairments, consequences of voice problems among teachers, warning signs and some preventive strategies.
Talk layout: Lecture – question-answers and discussion
About the Presenter: Dr. Prakash Boominathan is a Sr. Consultant Speech Pathologist at Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre, Chennai, and currently is Professor and Principal at Sri Ramachandra Faculty of Audiology & Speech Language Pathology, Porur, Chennai. He is an alumnus of the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore and a PhD in ‘Vocal dynamics of singing voice’ from Sri Ramachandra University. A Fulbright scholar who was trained at the Vocal Performance Laboratory at University of Cincinnati, USA and at the Institute of Musician’s Medicine, Frieburg, Germany on voice analysis and training for singers and professional voice users. Over the last two decades, Prakash has been an advocate of vocal health for voice users (Singers, teachers, etc) through his clinical services, educational talks, writings and workshops. He has to his credit several publications on vocal health, exercise and related aspects in reputed national and international medical journals.