This week I want to share with you a resource that deserves to be more widely known, a project of the School of Education here at the University of Colorado. As the name suggests, it is modeled on Ed Talks and I find it an inspiring and informative source both for my own professional development but for its use in classes I teach to spark discussion and spread knowledge. For the past ten years the Ed School organizes a program featuring its own faculty and students talking most to them. The best introduction to them is to click on this link and view the forum this year titled “The Legacy and Future of Civil Rights.”
The program begins with a short introduction by Kathy Schultz, the Dean of the School, followed by a powerful presentation of the usual length of ten minutes by Tania Hogan, head of the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education. Tania’s talk is titled “From Silence to Advocacy,” and follows her evolution from being the only Spanish speaking student in her Pennsylvania elementary, where a teacher suggested she be tested of autism because of her shyness, through increasing confidence in herself through high school and college to become first a teacher of bilingual education to an activist, researcher, and Ph.D. student. I encourage you to view further in this link and to surf on the project’s website,
https://www.colorado.edu/education/about/news-events/cu-boulders-ed-talks
So far I haven’t found a talk that was not worth watching, but there are two I particularly recommend, Valerie Otero’s The Courage to Learn: The Unexpected Physicist,” whose trajectory somewhat parallels Tania Hogan from discouragement and low expectations in the lower grades to someone who had to fight to get an education in physics and become one of the leading educators in the field and a pillar of CU’s Physics Education program. Just below this talk on the site is Robyn Tomiko’s “Lifting the Veil: The Truth about Education.” Robyn is now a Ph.D. student in the Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice, and I find deeply affecting both her portrayal of how middle school constrains students and her courageous empathy for these students.
The main reason Ed Talks work is that these educators speak personally and from the heart; they transformed the obstacles they faced in their own educations into improving the educations of those who are coming after them, and “reinstate into experience,” as John Dewey has put it, their ideas and activism. As you go to the web site and look through the talks themselves, please comment back and tell us your favorite and maybe even try your own hand at a Ted Talk and share it with us on this blog.