This is a powerful TED Talk given by Nadia Lopez, a middle school principal who opened her own school in Brownsville, a community in Brooklyn.
At the beginning of her talk, she goes over the statistics of the neighborhood violence and then the statistics of the first kids a part of her school.
To emphasize the important information, she uses simple visuals that only have a couple main statistics in large font.
As she moves on in her talk to speak on her students’ success despite being an underserved community, the images shown are still simple but are powerful in the messages that she talks about.
Her delivery emphasizes important or striking points with a change in tone and volume.
The main difference between her TED Talk and a normal speech is the audience involvement in the speech. She often addresses the audience directly, either with a rhetorical question or as a way to make them think critically.
Her hand gestures and movements also differ from a regular speech with more range of motion.
The visuals are designed to be readable in a quick format. The speaker then adds to the images to give them direction.
This is done without notes, which is a big change from the regular speech we have studied or done before.
Lopez does an incredible job of placing her words deliberately without stuttering, and really knows her speech well enough to not create awkward pauses when trying to remember.
She varied her eye contact to around the room and made sure to turn to different sides of the audience.
Another aspect I really like about her talk was that she created a theme.
The colors of her school are purple and black to symbolize power in their culture and their abilities. The stats were all in purple and she even wore a black suit with a purple under shirt and eye shadow.
It connects the audience to the topic even more, and adds to how powerful and proud she is about her “scholars” as she calls her students.
It has been very helpful to watch TED talks inorder to get a better understanding of how to prepare for the next speech. It is evident that TED talks tend to be simple yet effective and meaningful. I think by adopting the concept less is more, the message is more powerfully conveyed. The topic you chose sounds really interesting!
I found it especially interesting how you pointed out that your speaker created a theme by incorporating her school colors into her outfit and her visual aid, further connecting the audience to her topic and how proud she is of her students, or “scholars” as you say. The visual aspect of a TED-talk speech is incredibly important, and this was a unique way to draw the audience into her speech.