“At the beginning of the school year, I went to an involvement fair on Hope College’s campus. I noticed TEDx Hope College’s booth. I talked to the executive team and signed up for an audition. The executive team asked me to prepare a 5-minute presentation of my talk. Then, they asked me questions regarding my passion for my topic. I received a phone call a week later saying I had been one of the 9 speakers selected. On top of that, I was the first freshman in TEDxHopeCollege’s history to give a talk. I prepared my talk for roughly 3 months before the TEDx event. This involved memorizing 12 minutes of content and perfecting my physical and verbal presentation. The preparation was incredibly challenging, especially as I navigated through my first semester of college, but I had amazing curators to help me through the process. They were an extra eye and ear while I edited my speech. They provided personal experience (they’ve each given talks in the past) and great public speaking advice. I’m not new to public speaking, as I was heavily involved in theater at West Ottawa, but the TED process is its own beast. I needed a lot of guidance throughout the experience.
The TED organization claims the slogan ‘ideas worth spreading’. I worked to tap into this slogan while writing my talk. I understood that my talk might not make a difference for every single audience member. However, even if my talk reached just one person, it would’ve been a success to me. The knowledge and care of one person can make a great difference. I wanted to spread awareness on a topic that isn’t headlined nearly as much as it should be.
While it’s true that giving a TED Talk is a wonderful resume boost, it means so much more than that to me. My talk allowed me to give back to the West Ottawa community. I have so much gratitude for West Ottawa educators. By sharing my personal testimony, I revealed the West Ottawa faculty’s incredible compassion to the public sphere. Giving the TED Talk hasn’t necessarily changed my life, but it has allowed me to have wonderful conversations with people who’ve seen my talk. Those conversations validate my talk’s message while making me feel very seen in my journey. I’m so thankful for this opportunity altogether. My talk has the potential to be picked up by the TED organization. This means that after they watch my talk, they have the authority to post it on their media sites if they like it. Having my talk on their sites would allow more people to access my talk. I’d love my ideas to be as widespread as possible.
My talk is titled ‘How my teacher saved my life.’ My overall thesis is that we must invest in education as our educators invest in us. The organization of my talk was inspired by my high school graduation speech last year. As class secretary, I was asked to give a faculty recognition speech. The preparation for my speech was honestly easy. I knew exactly what to say, because I’ve felt grateful and passionate about West Ottawa educators’ roles in their students’ lives. In fact, West Ottawa faculty contributed greatly to my personal testimony. I’ve known the impact of educators because of that.
Educators have changed my life. I developed my TED Talk to have a greater call to action: we need to create change in the education system. There are so many issues within education that are causing educators to leave the field altogether. We can’t afford to lose the people who are making a difference in our youth’s lives. Whether you’re a teacher, student, parent, or community member, this is a message we all need to hear.”
Video of Dumas’s talk → Access her speech at the timestamp 1:23:50 in the link below:
