The Ted-Ed club at Green Level collaborated with Panther Creek and Green Hope to create an inter-school showcase event for speakers to spread and share their ideas on everyday topics. The showcase took place on Thursday, April 21, starting at 6 PM at Panther Creek. 

Our school’s club has two hard-working co-presidents, Preksha Jain and Shweta Shah. They helped put together this amazing event for three schools, along with the presidents from Green Hope and Panther Creek.

Green Level also had three fantastic speakers that spoke about important topics in today’s world. First up, Ailene Tan. Tan talked about America’s car dependence and how it isn’t sustainable. “Basically, we’re really dependent on cars…,” Tan explains when asked to summarize her memorable speech. “…You’re almost always required to go places in a car. This poses a lot of environmental problems as well as socially and economically. Because many people aren’t able to afford cars and they’re going to have to walk which can be dangerous.” She continues to share her ideas on the matter by talking about public transit and how inefficient cars are. She spoke about some solutions to the problem like investing more money into public transportation and increasing walkability in certain areas. 

Next to present her ideas, Tisha Parekh spoke about the road to a more peaceful life through meditation. She spoke about staying positive in today’s day and age. Here is a summary of what Tisha talked about; “My speech was about meditation and how you should do it every day to calm yourself down and relax. With meditation, you should always think positive because if you don’t, everything will go negative.”

And last but not least, Dhyana Pasupu. Dhyana spoke passionately about school and whether or not it’s setting us up for success. Here is a little about how she really feels about this topic. “My talk is basically about how our education system is so outdated. It’s from the Industrial Revolution. We’re still in that mindset. The fundamentals of the system now are the same as back then and we’re a completely new generation with different needs and new opinions. It’s having effects on teachers and students.“ All in all, her talk was about how students should advocate for themselves and really try to do what they need to do to make sure that they are successful in life. 

Now, let’s circle back to our co-presidents, Preksha and Shweta. When asked how they put in energy and hard work into making this event possible. “Last year, we did a virtual showcase event because we wanted to highlight our speakers and let the people we worked with have a chance to share. We wanted to have something more concrete this year. We saw that Panther Creek and Green Hope have worked together in the past, so we reached out. Through that, we started working together.” Preksha continues to mention how they worked out logistics as a team, how they worked out how the speeches would be judged, and worked on the criteria for these speeches. 

When we asked Shweta how she collaborated with others to make the showcase possible, she said, “Over the past few months, club members from all three schools, Green Level, Green Hope, and Panther Creek were given the opportunity to craft their own Ted style talks. Then, there was a preliminary round set for speakers to try out. Then, those that made it to the next level were put into the showcase.”

In conclusion, the Ted event here at Green Level and the showcase with Green Hope and Panther Creek went smoothly and we sure learned a lot! If you are interested in being a part of the club next year, be sure to know what you want to talk about and how to go about it!