Ted Talks: An Experiment in Speech & Rhetoric

During Spring 2022, I participated in the Jesuit Pedagogy Seminar at Fordham University, which comprised of graduate student instructors across disciplines. Below I've included the transcript to my talk from our end-of-the-year symposium, which took place on Friday, May, 6th 2022.

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Imagine that one morning, while checking your email, you receive a message from a representative with TED Conferences, LLC, the American media organization that oversees the creation and free online distribution of recorded talks, typically delivered by field specialists and experts.

You open the email and realize that they are inviting you—yes, you—to prepare a speech on an “idea worth spreading.” I want you all to pause and reflect on how you might feel in this moment.

For those of you who are already experts in your respective fields, you are likely used to others looking to you for knowledge and guidance; thus, accepting the invitation to deliver a TED Talk might not be too difficult.

However, for others, like our undergraduates who may not have a clear understanding of their personal value systems or career paths just yet, accepting the challenge to create a speech of TED-Talk caliber might be more challenging. They would have to acknowledge the fact that they have something to contribute. That their voice matters. And they would also have to reflect on which cultural issues they feel the most passionate about.

As my presentation title suggests, I challenged my students to create a TED talk for their final project in our Honors: Speech and Rhetoric class at Lincoln Center.

A major aspect of Jesuit education, as we have discussed throughout our teaching seminar, is encouraging students to direct their energy towards making the world a better place, to become women, men, and people for others.

Unlike other educational paradigms that prioritize disciplinary excellence or preparation for high-paying jobs, Jesuit pedagogy invites students to direct their energies and unique skill sets towards finding solutions to the world's most pressing issues, especially those faced by minoritized individuals such as racism, poverty, or homelessless.

It is my belief, however, that students must first conceive of themselves as individuals that have something to contribute before they can go out into the world and make it a better place for others. For this reason, I wanted to create an experiment in Jesuit pedagogy that would also serve as a catalyst for student empowerment and self-belief.

Early in the semester I distributed a prompt that explained the general premise, requirements, and deadlines of the TED Talk assignment. To save time, I won’t cover all of these details in full; however, I have printed a handout with the complete instructions if you’d like to learn more.

With this assignment, I allowed students to select topics of their own choosing. It was my hope that this open-endedness would allow them to learn more about their individual passions and develop their own perspectives and expertise on matters that are truly meaningful to them. As the Spanish Jesuit priest Adolfo Nicolás expresses in his 2010 address, student transformation happens during meaningful encounters related to their individual values, life, and work.

As my next slide shows, many of my students selected topics that delivered their own solutions to a specific form of social injustice facing the world today. Each of the photos on this slide represent the images selected by my students to accompany their initial paper proposals.

Student A, in her talk, will address the stigmas and attitudes towards those who are homeless. This topic is meaningful to her because she had a family member who immigrated here and ended up living on the streets as a result of not being able to find work. In the talk, she will share explicit strategies that we can adopt to further eliminate these harmful stereotypes.

Student B, in her talk, will address the rise of fashion-related microtrends, which are the phenomenon of a certain clothing item or style rising in popularity almost in just a few weeks. She plans to explore the major presence of microtrends on social media platforms, especially Tik Tok. She will also discuss the mostly negative effects that these trends have on the environment and offer solutions for participation in microtrends on social media in a more eco-friendly manner.

Lastly, student C, in his talk, addresses common phrases that are harmful to the LGBTQ+ community, specifically the uses of words such as “gay” and “queer” in a negative manner. He refutes the idea that it is no big deal to use these words by showing the harmful effects of such language on young members of the LGBTQ+ community. His talk offers individuals alternative words to use and raises awareness about the seriousness of this social injustice.

I share these three examples because they illustrate a diversity of topics and approaches that students were able to address in response to the same exact prompt.

In addition to their project proposals, I also required each student to work on this project steadily throughout the semester.

As this timeline illustrates, they first delivered an initial proposal to the class; they next participated in a peer review session with a first draft of their transcript; they then carried out a practice recording and reflection; all of this took place before they were required to submit their final TED Talk recording and reflection, which are both due next Monday.

With the assignment structure, I drew on the principle of cura personalis by designing a project timeline that promotes student mental health and well being. I anticipated that students would feel anxious about the various actions needed to carry out the project, which included, research, writing, rewriting, reflection, recording, and editing. I broke up these tasks into smaller assignments; students slowly worked on the project over the course of the semester rather than procrastinating and getting it all done in a single week. It allowed them to take time to reflect on their individual values and interests and to learn more about those of their classmates.

Given the variety of requirements, including written and oral communication skills, this TED Talk assignment also challenged students to practice eloquentia perfecta, a prominent concept in Jesuit education that values clear and eloquent expression used to inspire action for the common good.

In their mid-semester reflections on the practice recording, my students evaluated the effectiveness of their nonverbal communication, specifically the five categories of posture, gestures, body movements, facial expressions, and eye contact. In one reflection, one of my students identifies a potential hurdle to completing the assignment, that is, her desire for perfection. Although she doesn’t go as far to come up with a solution to this potential hurdle here, stopping to write allows her to become more aware of this line of thought, which is one step to overcoming it. Additionally, in my comments to this student, I affirm her intentions and let her know that she has already made progress on a very difficult task and even one or two improvements between the initial recording and final are something to be proud of.

Overall, through this experiment in Jesuit pedagogy, I have learned that asking students to write their own TED talks allows them to develop their field expertise, confidence, and presentation skills. And it introduces them to a medium by which to engage with threats to social justice and human dignity, in a manner that is quite accessible to a general audience.

If you have the opportunity, I would highly recommend challenging your own students to create TED talks about a contemporary issue or topic relevant to your course. I think you will find that it can be a fun, empowering, and pedagogically useful experience.

Thank you.