TEDx Talks - How to teach like a talk show host | Kate Hickey, M.Ed | TEDxOldHickory
The speaker shares their admiration for Oprah Winfrey and how it influenced their teaching style. They advocate for teachers to see themselves as hosts, similar to Oprah, by focusing on three main areas: student stories, protecting presence, and reinforcement. By prioritizing student stories, teachers can create an empathetic and connected classroom environment. The speaker shares a personal story about their daughter, highlighting the missed opportunities when teachers don't engage with students' backgrounds. Protecting presence involves being fully attentive and reducing distractions like cell phones to foster genuine connections. Reinforcement is about recognizing and celebrating students' positive traits, similar to how Oprah highlighted her guests' stories. The speaker shares an example of writing personalized emails to students to acknowledge their strengths and contributions, fostering a sense of belonging and self-worth. They conclude by encouraging teachers to ask students about their goals and support them in achieving them, creating a supportive and engaging learning environment.
Key Points:
- Teachers should focus on student stories to create empathy and connection.
- Protecting presence means being attentive and reducing distractions like cell phones.
- Reinforcement involves recognizing and celebrating students' positive traits.
- Personalized communication, like emails, can boost student self-worth.
- Encourage students to share goals and support them in achieving them.
Details:
1. 🌟 Dreaming of Oprah: A Journey to a Talk Show
- The speaker has been obsessed with Oprah Winfrey since childhood and learned more from her show than from school, illustrating Oprah's profound influence on their personal development.
- Oprah's impact was so significant that it led the speaker to major in journalism, driven by the dream of hosting their own talk show similar to Oprah's.
- The speaker credits Oprah for shaping their values and professional aspirations, highlighting specific instances where Oprah's work inspired them to pursue a path in media.
2. 🎤 The Unseen Talk Show: Everyday Interviews
- Oprah interviewed over 37,000 people, discovering that everyone, from prisoners to royalty, needed to feel seen and heard. This insight became a guiding principle for the speaker.
- Teachers should view themselves as hosts, focusing on three strategies: embracing student stories, protecting presence, and reinforcement.
- Focusing on student stories by emulating Oprah's interviewing style has led to significant positive outcomes in the classroom, fostering empathy and a sense of belonging.
- The speaker uses their classroom to create a space where students feel seen and heard, emphasizing the importance of empathy.
3. 👥 Embracing Student Stories in Teaching
- Implementing a rule to limit teacher's speaking time to 10 minutes before engaging students can increase connection.
- Teachers often miss opportunities to learn about students' backgrounds, leading to missed chances for meaningful connections.
- A personal example highlights a teacher's daughter, fluent in three languages and with diverse global experiences, who was never asked about her life abroad.
- Teachers have a daily opportunity to connect with students and enhance learning by understanding their unique stories.
4. 🔗 Protecting Presence: Focused Teaching
- Emphasize student stories as a core part of teaching to enhance engagement and learning.
- Model and practice social skills within school to compensate for the reduced social practice outside due to technology.
- Promote face-to-face interactions among students to improve social skills, countering the isolating effects of technology such as smartphones and social media.
- Encourage teachers to manage students' experiences in classrooms by limiting cell phone use, fostering connection and engagement instead of reliance on digital interactions.
- Create a classroom environment where students understand the importance of engaging instruction and commit to meaningful interactions with each other.
5. ✨ Reinforcing Student Potential: Celebrating Success
- Teachers can significantly impact students by helping them make sense of their own stories, akin to Oprah's ability to extract meaningful narratives.
- Writing personalized emails to students, highlighting their unique contributions, can reinforce self-worth and potential effectively.
- Example: A teacher recognized a student named Jaden for his talent in connecting with people by citing specific actions like encouraging a freshman.
- Including parents and coaches in public acknowledgments fosters a supportive community around the student.
- Celebrating specific traits such as empathy, risk-taking, and progress encourages students to value these qualities within themselves.
6. 🎈 Bringing Dreams to Life: A Classroom Story
- The key to happiness is the quality of relationships, which should be practiced in schools by listening to students and helping them find their voice.
- A classroom activity involves students creating bucket lists to share their life goals, which are displayed in the classroom to encourage accountability.
- A student named Olivia, facing personal challenges, had 'ride a hot air balloon' on her bucket list, which the class helped fulfill by raising money and organizing the event.
- The class surprised Olivia by writing her bucket list on the whiteboard and helping her cross off the hot air balloon ride, fostering a sense of being seen and supported.
- The speaker's challenge is to ask others about their bucket lists to help them achieve their dreams, emphasizing the importance of listening and showcasing people's stories.