Carrie's Sample Presentation

     At my mentor meeting last week (oops, haven't blogged about that yet but better late than never), Mr. Holl and I discussed what a WISE presentation should be like, or maybe I shouldn't say should, but what my presentation could be like. Since he has mentored two people in the past Mr. Holl has some experience in the area of presentations. We discussed powerpoints and what your presentation should be communicating. I decided after hearing examples of past presentations that I wanted a slide show of pictures running in the background of my presentation, but other than that I just want to be talking to my audience about my experiences. Of course I will also be doing my presentation in my clown costume.
    While Mr Holl and I made some great progress the other week on what I envisioned my project presentation to be, attending Carrie Haas' sample presentation was the most helpful of all. First of all, her presentation was very moving. I have never seen someone that confident about sharing their emotions with a crowd of people and her passion for her project was amazingly visible and uplifting. While I don't know Carrie very well, I was so proud of her and what the WISE program teaches kids who really take advantage of it.
     Her presentation made me think about what I learned about myself in my project and what skills I would like to share with my evaluators. I really enjoyed how she actually shared her poetry with us, it was a true testament to her projects journey. I want to be able to show my evaluators what I've learned as well, in both the physical tricks as well as the mental discoveries. I made a list of the core things I want to communicate that I learned during my presentation while I was listening to Carrie's.
1. I learned to be okay with being goofy.
2. I found a way to connect with kids that I really enjoy, I've never really liked them before now.
3. As a professional stresser, my WISE project and my whole clowning mindset has given me an outlet to step back and take a chill pill every once and a while.
      Also listening to her evaluators talk about the other parts of her project like the research commentary and the narrative I realized that I need to get my butt in gear because all of my materials are due on June 7th and I have a lot of work to do before then.