Today I spoke to 470 students from Kindergarten to Grade 5 at Seaside Park Elementary School in Saint John, NB. This is a brand new school with a huge gym and my presentation was actually the first time they used the new sound system.
I have spoken in front of enough groups by now to know that there’s not much I can do as a presenter to control the group because sometimes, kids are just in a talkative mood. Today was one of those days and there’s only been a handful of times where the kids have been this talkative throughout my entire presentation. I try to vary the amount of interactive I have with the group because I find that when they are talkative, the more I try to engage the kids, the more sustained their noise level will be. I do prefer to engage the kids but I’m learning to adapt to make it more about me talking to them instead of me talking with them.
Ultimately, I do know that kids are taking something away from my talks and connecting with the messages. The better I get at explaining my messages, engaging them with my messages and the more my skills as a presenter become, the more impact I’ll have on the kids. It’s a process and I’m in no rush to get there. It’s happening as it’s meant to and everytime I talk, I gain new insight and more experience.
The flip side to having a talkative group of kids is that when I do the frisbee demo at the end (I only do the frisbee demo as part of the presentation when I’m not also doing frisbee workshops at the school), they are going to give me a ton of energy back, which I love. They were blown away by the skipping, frisbee fireworks and the frisbee trickshot. When I threw the disc into the basketball net, they went crazy!
Thanks again for having me in Michelle and for all of the help setting up/tearing down!
If you are interested in having me speak and teach frisbee at your school or your organization, please Contact Me.