Whitko Middle School Students Hear Ted Talk
LARWILL — Sixth grade students at Whitko Middle School were treated to a different type of Ted Talk on Wednesday, filling the room with laughter and excitement! Ted Wiese, a motivational speaker who specializes in teaching leadership to youth, led them through his conference “Challenge Leadership Training with Ted.” Wiese is the entrepreneurial lead of Wiese Training and Development and his approach helps students understand that leadership is something that is learned.
“I feel like I’m planting seeds,” Wiese explained over his brief lunch break. His approach is to help schools nurture leadership in students by showing that students have a responsibility to be a leader among their friends and in their school on a daily basis.
According to his website, Wiese says, “Following the workshop, adults and students say that participants: are actively engaged throughout the experience, are excited to become more actively involved in school clubs and organizations, accept responsibility for leadership and take ownership of their success, learn how to use their enthusiasm and positive attitude to impact the student body, and leave the program believing they can make a positive difference in the lives of others.”
For students, leaders can sometimes be mistakenly chosen simply based on characteristics outside of their control like their age, height, or a variety of other factors, but Wiese outlines that leadership is not something a person is simply born with, it is something that each person must learn to develop over time, and that anyone can be a leader.
“Every student who walks through the doors of Whitko Middle School has the opportunity to be a leader. Some will choose to be a leader in the classroom, some will choose to be a leader within the sports they play, and some within our numerous clubs,” shared WMS Mental Health Therapist, Kelly Goode, LCSW. “There are also students who want to be leaders, but don’t feel that they have the skills needed or the confidence to be leaders among their peers. With Challenge Leadership, Ted Weise, gives our students those skills and builds confidence within each student so that every 6th grader can now start the school year ready to be a leader in our building.”
“Seeing the excitement and joy of our students actively learning about what we expect from them here at Whitko as leaders is a reward that we get for exposing our sixth graders annually to Challenge Leadership Training with Ted. We made a memory today!” said WMS Principal Gene Sweeney, Ph.D.
Students were split into two groups, a morning and afternoon session, and the conference was not a sit-and-listen style of event. Quite to the contrary, students were actively immersed in age appropriate interactive experiences that engaged multiple senses (sight, touch, and sound) and helped them feel comfortable moving beyond their own self-imposed barriers in how they participate with a group as a leader.
The teachers also had the chance to attend the event, “I enjoyed the psychology of positive reinforcement,” remarked WMS Visual Arts Teacher Eric Sellers.
Before the event was over, Wiese’s principles for leadership were easily able to be repeated by the students who were in attendance, and many left with a special token they had earned as a result of their participation. To learn more about Ted Wiese you can visit HearTedTalk.com