Under the spotlight and armed with bold ideas, a group of enterprising students took center stage to deliver their very own TEDxTAEHS talks, captivating an audience of peers, teachers, and community members with topics ranging from mental health to artificial intelligence—proving that age is no barrier to powerful thinking.
The June 9th event, organized by Danielle Ragavanis, explored the theme of Theme: Voices in the Void and addressed AAVE, music, history, gaming, imposter syndrome, finding your peace, hustle culture and the need to take a break.
“Each student had to propose what they wanted to do and TED has very strict guidelines as far as storytelling; it cannot be just a personal narrative. They had to propose an idea worth sharing. So some of them used their AP Seminar research topics, some of them talked about their AP Research exam topics, and some talked about their own growth and experiences,” Ragavanis said.
Upon seeing the finished product, Ragavanis shared that she is interested in continuing the project next year. “If [the students] come back and mentor, I would absolutely do this again. We are going to try and get another license so that we can expand it to the community, including teachers.”
Phil Baker, Jazmine Gray, Alondra Ramos, Walter Ollivierre, and Jason Fischedick worked with students and helped bring the TEDxTAEHS initiative to life and coached students to help create a final, finished product.
Coming up with a topic to cover was a challenge for students. Jessica Baba’s Imitation: The Actor’s Guide to Identity
“A lot of people tell me that I often wear many masks and I’m often different with different people I interact with so I wanted to look into why I’ve developed that way and also how I have grown from freshman year to senior year of high school. And I think there were many different pivotal moments, even reaching farther back than high school. So I started off my elementary school experience of a clown. And then I also realized that in high school, I also acted as Festy the Clown in Model UN. And taking all these different characters and changing who I was to fit the characters also helped me discover what I don’t like and what I do like. And so I thought about how imitation has also been a tool for me to grow,” Baba said. “Delivering it and hearing the audience laugh in return to like some of the jokes I was saying, it just gives you some of that assurance that what you’re saying is getting across.”
Gabrielle Salins addressed the topic of imposter phenomenon and her own imposter, Alex, in The Imposter in the Room.
“I really enjoyed getting the chance to tell my story in a different way… generalizing my story so that it wasn’t me just telling my story; I think was probably the most fun I had with the whole process. I talked about Alex, and I had a lot of fun making that connection,” Salins said. Above all else the message she wants people to take away from her talk is to “remember to be true to yourself.”
Justin Smiley-Carter’s talk, The Concept of “Cool”: AAVE, Bias, and Belonging, delved into AAVE, code switching, and slang usage. “I would say it’s kind of scary. I’ve never really talked about anything like that before this year, especially some of the things that I brought up in my talk. Those are things I’ve never, ever said before. And my brain works in a very analytical, researchy way so having to combine that in a TED Talk where it’s like, you want to be personable, you also want to be authentic, but you also want to add your research, so you’re very credible. It was very hard balancing vulnerability with the more analytical, comfortable side of my brain,” Smiley-Carter said.
(Alondra Ramos)
The feedback that students received from peers, post-talk, also made the experience more rewarding, but the lessons students’ learned about themselves was the real takeaway.
“It was exciting that all 16 got accepted. Last year we had zero. This year we had 16! Amazing So, it’s a big deal,” Ragavanis said.
More TEDxTAEHS Youth:
Systemic Sound: The Minor Chords That Shaped Major History
Protecting your Peace and Sustaining your Happiness
