The Project I’ll Never Forget

As a student, I have completed more than my fair share of projects. Some projects taught me skills, some projects shaped my thinking. Way too many projects had me staying up late to finish them. With so many to work on, I ended up forgetting the majority of them, only vaguely remembering a select few. However, out of the many projects I have completed, one stands out. One project that both inspired and taught me. One project that I still remember and probably always will.

My seventh-grade teacher loved projects. He always said that projects should be used not only to consolidate learning, but to teach as well. He demonstrated this belief constantly in the classroom. Every project was designed to keep us engaged and learning, making them consistently memorable. They always allowed just enough structure to bounce off of and the creative freedom to keep us motivated, allowing us to make our work truly our own.

It was in this teacher’s class that I was introduced to my favourite school project, the TrED Talk. An original spin on the TED Talks we know and love, the TrED Talk was a literacy project and, like its predecessor, the TED Talk, involved giving a presentation about a topic of interest. The extra R in the name was an amalgamation of my teacher’s name and the word TED. Students were to draft and revise a five-minute script that they would then present to the class. The biggest difference between the TED Talks and TrED Talks is that we were—thankfully—allowed to use a script for our TrED Talks.

So, why was this project so important to me? For starters, the ability to choose our own topic gave me some much needed freedom. The opportunity to research my interests was a breath of fresh air, especially compared to the rigid structure of my other assignments. I did my TrED Talk about the psychology of violence: how violence affects our brains and vice versa. In case you were wondering, yes, it does! This topic has always interested me because I have always been curious as to why people do horrible things to each other.

As a psychology lover, this was a topic I was deeply interested in but was rarely discussed in a school setting.

Through this project, I got to learn more about a topic that intrigued me. Additionally, my interest in the topic meant I ended up doing more research on this project than I would have any other. I learned things that I remember to this day, like how there were differences in brain grey matter between people who have committed homicide and those who have not. However, I was only able to learn and remember this because of how interesting I found the topic. Even at home, I spent my time researching and reading relevant articles. Not only did this research enhance my project, but the extra practice also strengthened my research skills, which I use in all my studies from Science to Literacy.

Apart from the creative opportunities offered in the TrED Talk project, I greatly appreciated the longer presentation times. Since we had five minutes to present instead of the typical two to three minutes, presentations were more in-depth. This made the presentations more memorable, not just as presenters, but as listeners.

Spending hours listening to the number of people in a class present can be tedious and repetitive, especially if the presentation topics are similar (or worse, a repeat!). On the other hand, TrED Talks were much more engaging. Both the interesting topics that people were excited to present and the depth of each presentation made time fly by.

The third reason this project was my favourite may be controversial, but I believe allowing students to use memory aids, like cue cards or a script, makes a project all the better. Instead of forcing students to waste time memorizing something they are likely going to forget after the project, let students use memory aids! This gives them the opportunity to focus their time on skills that will benefit them in the future, like presentation techniques.

Furthermore, learning to present while using memory aids is an important skill. In most extracurricular meetings I have been a part of, presenting information while referring to notes is commonplace.

For instance, when I presented my speech as one of the valedictorians at my elementary school, I was allowed to use a script. The difficulty in presenting my speech had nothing to do with memorizing it. Instead, I had to focus on my tone of voice, volume, and ability to convey emotion through a presentation. So, the emphasis on presenting properly in our TrED Talks taught me how to present when I needed it later on.

For any teachers currently reading and wondering how to apply this information to their own projects, I recommend adding lots of opportunities for creative input, in-depth thinking, and memory aids. Combine that with a well-thought-out project, and I am confident your projects will be somebody’s favourite!