The same year I joined the school, my local community started a TEDx chapter. Seeking to expand their community work to youth, I created a student organization at U-Prep where students could design projects of their own and ones supporting local TEDx conferences and projects.
We've been active every year, doing something different every time. Students learn vital community service, professional organization, meeting & event organization, community outreach, and personal planning skills.
TEDx Student Salon
Hosted at U-Prep's
"Little Theater" Center
(May 5, 2014)
We worked for 4 months on this. Students organized a "mini-conference" of their own, developing a theme, picking videos to screen, recruiting and training three student presenters, and hosting a community conversation reception.
The final event was attended by about 100 members of the community and was one of my most rewarding days in education!
Videos of Student Presentations are below. Each student worked for a full month with me to develop their pieces.
Christian Macias (U-Prep Senior)
Thesis: A simplified perspective into what our appetite versus our actions say about our species. We may be quick to criticize humanity for it's avarice, but we may also appreciate the silver lining in some of our simplest, most common acts of serving goods greater than our biological selves.
___________________________
Adam Walker (U-Prep Sophomore)
Thesis: There is a fundamental connection between plant, human, and community growth and health. Through care and education, gardening and growing our own food can teach, enliven and connect us to a deeper part of ourselves.
_________________________
Natalie LiVolsi (U-Prep Junior)
Thesis: An excerpt from a larger musical intended to be sung by a clockwork ballerina; trapped by the nature of her mechanical existence and spurned by unrequited love, she bitterly curses the stars in this ballad of tortured emotion. Recorded at TEDxRedding Salon UPrep.
2012 TEDxRedding Conference
In 2012, our first TEDx youth team organized an "idea Gallery"
Theme — "Fill in the Blank, Live in the Moment :
The Experience & Appreciation of Change"
Our group's purpose was to complement the convention and provide visuals for how local youth experiences intersect with speaker talks being given that day.
The gallery featured art, music, literary passages, photography, and was hosted by our student members.
2015 TEDx Student Documentary
This year's TEDx group at U-Prep are putting together a documentary short film.
The film builds on two Redding TEDx talks about sustainable gardening spaces and classes at local school campuses, and their impacts upon local education and community health.
We first interviewed James Theimer, a local architect, about the garden he developed at the internationally-acclaimed "Green-School" Redding School of the Arts that he designed, following up on the purpose of the garden he built there, which he gave a TEDx talk on 3 years ago.
The team then also filmed and interviewed U-Prep teacher Bobby Shufelberger, who created the class that inspired team member and lead director Adam Walker, to deliver his own talk about school gardens, as described above.
We are nearly finished with filming, and should be done editing by the beginning of April. The documentary premiers at this Fall's 2015 TEDxRedding Conference.