Blog Post # 13 Collaborative

What can we learn from these TED talks?

Shane Koyczan grew up in Penticton, British Columbia. He is an award winning poet, author, and performer. He published his first book of poetry collection, Visiting Hours, in 2005. Visiting Hours was selected for the Best Book of the Year in 2005, by the Guardian and Globe and Mail. The world took notice when his influential poem "To This Day" went viral. The recognition he received from this powerful poem led to his TED talk in February 2013. 

Shane Koyczan: To this day...for the bullied and beautiful
By: Jasmine McCall 

In this TED talk, Mr. Koyczan delivers his spoken word poem about bullying and what it means for children who are bullied. He speaks about his personal experiences of being bullied as a child. His poem also addresses the long term effects bullying has had on a woman who was his classmate in elementary school. 

Mr. Koyczan says that standing up for ones self is hard to do, if they don't know who they are. At an early age we are expected to define who we are and if we don't do it, we can count on our classmates to do it for us. The words: geek, fatty, slut, and ugly are just a few of the terms that are used by our classmates to describe who we are. Insecurity starts when we are assigned these roles, we take on a negative view of ourselves because we can't help but believe that the words they speak are true. One of the biggest lies ever told is, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." "As if broken bones hurt worse than the names we were called." Physical wounds are the ones that heal, it is the emotional ones that seem to last forever. 

Teachers, parents, and other adults also play the role of bully. Mr. Koyczan spoke about his dream of being a journalist, a dream that was quickly shot down, because he was told to be realistic. He then said he wanted to be a professional wrestler, to which the reply was "now don't be stupid." People asked him what he wanted to be, and then told him what not to be or what he couldn't be. As adults we should encourage children to dream, to imagine the possibilities that life has to offer. There should never be a time when an adult believes he/she has the right to dismiss a child's dream. 

"To this day kids are still being called names." There has been a lot of talk about stopping bullying in schools. I question whether this can be done, bullying didn't begin recently, it has been around for years. I'm not saying that we should stop trying to teach our students/children to be compassionate, kind human beings, just that we should teach students who are being bullied how to rise above bullying. We need to help them see the beauty that lies within themselves. "Our lives will always continue to be a balancing act, when it has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty."

To This Day Project

What can we learn from these TED talks?
 By: Edna Montgomery

These speakers all had the same message, let’s move forward in a new direction of educating our children. Each had a passion for the message they were speaking about. A genuine concern, for the need to reform our education system, is the main theme in just about all of these speeches. Much can be learned, examples of inexpensive ways, encouraging your students, and peers helping peers are just a few of what these speakers shared in reinventing the classrooms. Educators can think on these speeches and walk in the classroom with the students future in mind. Hopefully, their thought will be that technology and hand on type learning will help in fulfilling my job of readying these students for what is present in today’s world, not yesterday’s world.