By Audrey Perry – |Feature|
Almost every August for the past three years, Lincoln High has opened its doors to the TEDxYouth team. On August 19, for this year’s event, Lincoln High welcomed the 2017 TEDxYouth team. TEDxYouth events are world wide, organized for and by youth, events to share ideas. This event was organized by non other than Shaun Harner, TEDxYouth Lincoln’s curator. Harner has been involved with this program since the very beginning in 2012. She had gone to the first TEDx event in Lincoln and became fascinated.
“I loved it and I was so excited about it, so I asked to volunteer,” Harner said. After volunteering for about a year with the main events, Lincoln’s TEDx curator, Randy Bretz, approached Harner with an offer.
“Hey. They just came out with these youth events… would you be interested in helping do one?” She accepted. Since then, her job as curator includes the enormous responsibilities putting the teams together. She makes sure that after those committees are chosen, they stay on track with the end goal. The teams spanned from a communication team, speaker selection, program, and logistics team.
“We all get together and use all sorts of tools to put applications out there on our social media website and then we go through the process of selecting speakers and selecting talent,” Harner said. This year, in comparison to other years, the program was greatly condensed.
“We had less performances this year because we were trying to simplify it,” Harner explains. Normally the program would have been from 10a.m. to 4p.m., but this year it started at noon. The theme of the event was, “What, now?” inspired by a TEDxYouth event in New York. The board of directors looked at the videos and topics and decided that it would be best for their personal program.
“We thought it’s still a really appropriate theme for right now,” Harner said. Student and adult performers were given the opportunity to explore that theme and create their own topics.
In the first section speeches were given by Carter Yost, who is a Lincoln High junior, Megan Elliot, and Darren Leibhart. JP Davis Music and Jordan Reanne Pitt performed music and danced together.
The entirety of the event was split into three sections of speakers and performances with two breaks in between where the attendees could participate in themed activities. One of the activities was human foosball, where people worked together to create a life sized version of a foosball game.
In the first floor hallway, there was an interview question art wall where questions related to the speech topics were hung on the wall in different colors. People answered the questions using sticky notes that displayed their opinions.
In the east hallway, attendees could make science identity buttons. They chose pictures that best represented their science identity, or how science plays a role in their personal life, and put it into a collage on a button.
One of the most popular activities was the stereotype unboxing groups. The leaders had each group of people label themselves with a stereotype they think they fit into. Then the leader helps “unbox” and get rid of them. There were also more stations guests could participate in based on the theme and program. During the second section,Voice competitor, Hannah Huston had an interview with one of the event’s emcees, Hunter Radenslaben, and then sang her original song, “I Alone Have Loved You.”
Afterwards, Lincoln High’s Juliana Quattrochi, gave a speech called,”CRISPR’s Promise to Revolutionize Medicine.” LHS senior Keith Tran, spoke next. Tran’s performance,“Healthy Skepticism,” focused on fake news and what can be done about it. He also discussed the implications of fake news and simple solutions. His point was to vie for education about false news in school systems. He thinks that TEDxYouth is a great opportunity because you meet a ton of new people. He enjoyed meeting with speaker coaches. He worked with Patsy Koch Jones and a few other helpful people to put his speech together.
“I learned more about the strength and weakness of my speaking skills, which I think will help in my future,” Tran said.
In the third and last section speakers Jesse Lin, Julia McQuillan, and Gau Ayaj finished the speaking part of the program. Emma Harner sang another original song on her ukulele called, “The Roses.” Afterwards, the house band played music as people were dismissed from the auditorium. On the Lincoln TEDxYouth web page you can see pictures and more information about the event.
Next year the event will take place again. The theme is still undecided, but the TEDxYouth board knows of several people they are going to invite to perform. The only difference is that the event may not be at Lincoln High this coming year. Even though the event might not be here, Shaun Harner is appreciative of LHS.
“We are really grateful to Lincoln High and to LPS for all the resources that they dedicate to helping put this on,” Harner said. “We really appreciate all the work that they do.”
