What a Simple “Getting to Know You” Activity Can Teach Us About Teaching Artistry

One of the most revealing moments in Oksana Yeshshyorkina Baylan’s workshop came from an activity that could easily be dismissed as an icebreaker.

Participants were asked a simple question: tea or coffee?

They responded in the chat. Then Oksana invited a few people to explain their choices.

Very quickly, the answers became more than preferences. One participant spoke about drinking tea with other people but coffee alone. Another talked about missing Turkish coffee shops after moving country. Someone else connected Turkish tea with memories of studying at ITI. What began as a binary choice opened into stories, identities, memories and relationships. That is what made this workshop particularly relevant to Teaching Artistry.

It showed how a seemingly ordinary classroom activity can become a space for connection, responsiveness and human presence.

The activity is simple. The interaction is not.

Oksana’s workshop, “Getting to Know You”, was built around activities designed to help teachers and learners make connections. From the beginning, she positioned the session as experiential: participants would connect, play, discover and then redesign or adapt ideas themselves. She planned to use chat, reactions and breakout rooms rather than simply talk about relationship-building.

The first activity, “This or That”, required almost no materials. Participants chose between alternatives such as:

• tea or coffee;
• plan or improvise;
• games or projects.

The important part came after the choice. Oksana asked participants why.

This changed the activity. Instead of a quick poll, it became an invitation to reveal something of themselves.

The answers also became progressively richer. When participants discussed whether teachers should plan or improvise, they began talking about responsiveness to learners, changing a lesson in the moment, and balancing preparation with flexibility. One participant described planning as having a set of possible choices rather than a fixed route. Another argued that good teachers need to improvise when classroom reality does not match the plan.

This is where the activity moves beyond “getting to know you”.

It begins to reveal teachers’ beliefs.

Teaching Artistry begins with attention

Teaching Artistry is not simply about being entertaining, charismatic or creative. It is about becoming more attentive to what is happening between teacher, learners and the situation itself.

Oksana’s activity demonstrates this beautifully.

The teacher begins with a structure: two choices and a question.

But what happens next cannot be completely predicted.

A learner gives an unexpected answer. Another person connects with it. Someone tells a story. A disagreement appears. A new topic emerges.

The artistry lies partly in noticing these moments and deciding what to do with them.

Do we move on because the next slide is waiting?

Or do we recognise that something valuable has appeared?

In Oksana’s workshop, the participants themselves began creating much of the content. The discussion about games and projects, for example, developed into reflections on different kinds of motivation and the longer-term learning that projects may generate.

The workshop therefore demonstrated something central to performative and embodied teaching: lessons are not simply delivered. They are co-created in real time.

Low-threshold participation matters

Another interesting feature of “This or That” is how little it initially asks from participants.

You can simply type “coffee”.

That is enough.

But you can also explain why. You can tell a story. You can disagree. You can connect your answer to your professional beliefs.

One participant made precisely this point during the workshop: someone can participate at their own level. They may only make a choice, but they have still entered the interaction.

This is an important principle for Teaching Artistry.

Participation does not have to begin with a large performance demand.

Teachers can create different entry points.

A reaction emoji.

A single word in chat.

A binary choice.

A short explanation.

A story.

A conversation.

What matters is that the activity creates the possibility of moving from low-risk participation towards fuller presence.

That is particularly important in online teaching, where silence can easily be interpreted as disengagement. Oksana showed how simple technological tools—chat, reactions, microphones and breakout rooms—can create multiple ways of entering the shared space.

From activity to awareness

Another strong feature of the workshop was that Oksana did not simply demonstrate activities.

She stopped and asked participants to examine what had happened.

After the “This or That” sequence, she asked how much the group had learned about one another and how an activity like this might help quieter learners participate.

Participants identified several possibilities: breaking the ice, discovering learners’ preferences, encouraging speaking and giving teachers an early sense of the group.

This reflective move is significant.

The difference between collecting activities and developing teaching artistry is often reflection.

An activity may be enjoyable.

But what is it doing?

Who is able to participate?

What kind of interaction does it generate?

What does the teacher learn by watching?

What possibilities emerge that were not originally planned?

These are questions that shift attention from technique towards artistry.

The teacher as participant

Oksana’s second activity pushed this idea further.

She displayed numbers connected with her own life—2, 39 and 13—and asked participants to guess what they represented. The answers turned out to include two cats, her shoe size and her years of teaching experience. She then invited participants to repeat the activity with one another in breakout rooms.

Again, the technique is extremely simple.

What makes it powerful is reciprocity.

The teacher is not merely extracting information from learners. She contributes something of herself.

That small act changes the relationship.

In Teaching Artistry, teacher presence is not necessarily created through performance in the conventional sense. It can be created through appropriate self-disclosure, humour, responsiveness and willingness to participate in the same human exchange we ask of learners.

Connection is not an extra

Perhaps the most important message from this part of Oksana’s workshop is that connection is not something that happens before the “real lesson”.

Connection can be the mechanism through which learning begins.

A tea-or-coffee question can generate narrative.

A planning-or-improvising choice can expose professional beliefs.

A number can provoke curiosity.

A brief exchange can give a quieter learner a first opportunity to speak.

None of these requires sophisticated technology or elaborate materials.

They require something more fundamental: attention to people.

That is why Oksana’s workshop connects so naturally with Teaching Artistry. It reminds us that teaching is not simply the presentation of content. It is the creation of conditions in which people are willing to enter the room, reveal something of themselves, respond to others and become part of a shared experience.

Sometimes that begins with something as simple as:

Tea or coffee?