Alignment… Find Your Place
What an amazing experience… presenting at TEDxWestVancouverED. Yes, it was a 4-minute presentation… which had a lot of content in such a short time frame. The title of my talk was ALIGNMENT… my message was FIND YOUR PLACE. It was fun for me to connect my love for mathematics and pattern making to systems thinking. The underpinning of my presentation is “whatever we want for students, we should want for ourselves”… and “it will take all of us” to not only “make ripples in the system”… but together… “make waves.” I loved that I used the Russian Nesting Doll as a metaphor for my TEDx Talk. Thank you Sandra Cunningham for letting me borrow your dolls and take pictures of them as seen in this photo. Thank you to all of the volunteers and crew who made this event possible. Thank you to the awesome presenters (I am so inspired). And, thank you to my PLN. I could not have done this without you. You are the best!!!
Doing a TEDx presentation was more like giving a mini-dissertation defence. You need an idea that you are passionate about. Then, you are given a time allotment to get your message across. On the one hand, you are motivated to inspire the audience with what you have to say, but also you are asked to call the audience to action. A CALL TO ACTION. From passion to message to action… and thank goodness for the experience and expertise of Craig Cantlie, a school principal from the West Vancouver School District, who facilitated our “learning” to get prepared for the TEDx event. We spent almost a year from application to presentation to GET IT DONE. I needed that time… to make my thoughts and presentation coherent, purposeful, and meaningful… from what I had to say and what images I wanted to show to compliment what I had to say. I spent hours rehearsing my script. I was revising until the last minute. What I had to say underwent major revisions after rehearsal the day before the event. More rehearsing. No pressure.
Oh… the power of FORMATIVE FEEDBACK. Thank you Craig… It sounds too much like a lecture. Inspire them. Have fun. Be joyful. Hmm… very good points, hence the major revisions. Well, I did not change the meaning of what I wanted to say (or the PowerPoint slides), but I did change my approach. Interestingly, it was an easy change and it FELT GOOD. It was meant to be. In the end, I was satisfied with my presentation. Yes, it took me a moment to use the clicker to get my PowerPoint started because I think I am too conditioned for IGNITE presentations and automated slides. Aside from that and struggling with the clicker in general (I think I lost 20 seconds to clicking), I believe I said what I had wanted to say. Even though I find myself still rehearsing in my head post TEDx and I’m not sure what I had said. I don’t remember. What a strange phenomenon. That said, what pleased me the most was the immediate feedback from my friends in the audience. Some said that they loved the metaphor of the Russian Dolls, others said that it was nothing like what they had expected, and others said they just LOVED IT.
TEDxWestVancouverED was one of the best experiences I had. I was humbled by the work that went into preparing my presentation and I was honoured to be presenting with an awesome group of presenters. Everyone at TEDxWestVancouverED… participants, presenters, and volunteers… were INCREDIBLY POSITIVE and encouraging. Thank you. I appreciated the change in formats from an audience of 400 to 100 with small tables for the audience to sit around. I loved the PADLET coffee, SWAG bag gifts, and FOOD from Loblaws. The intimate nature of the event created a professional learning environment where you can connect deeply with your PLN and meet people. Others also participated in a socratic circle during the breaks, but of course, I opted to chat with friends. Best of all, I loved the “collective painting” activity. You can see examples of them on each side of the screen as seen in the photo. Presenters made paintings, but so did the participants. It was a beautiful metaphor for togetherness and vulnerability. It was awesome.
PS. I will post my TEDxWestVancouverED video on my home page once it’s available.