Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the latest celebration of TED-Ed Educator Talks at the TED Headquarters in NYC. For those who are unfamiliar, TED-Ed has created a cohort experience for educators to develop their own TED talks over the last couple of years, and it’s led to a lot of great speeches for educators across the field. A plethora of organizations – including EduColor – have gotten a chance to nominate and advocate for educators from their networks to contribute ideas that can build towards a TED talk. From there, organizations work with TED to elevate their “ideas worth spreading.”
I’ve had my own misgivings about TED over the years, but ultimately, I landed on one spot. Educators should have the opportunity to speak about an idea for about 15-20 minutes, without interruption. Just as academics, businesspeople, scientists, celebrities, and other luminaries have had.
At this point, I’ve already given two TED talks. My first on the definition of teacher voice gave me tons of confidence to pursue more opportunities to break our educational siloes. A few years later, in 2019, I gave another talk about educator voice in front of my then-boss Richard Carranza who, thankfully, appreciated it. Both took months to develop and practice. Both of these talks put me in rooms with educators across the world in ways I couldn’t do on my own. More importantly, it helped spur the idea in me that more of us could and should grow our imaginations for the world to see.
Now more than ever, we need more.
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