Students’ first Dream Talk

Six Dream Class students delivered professional presentations at the first ever Dream Talk! During the dream classes throughout the year, young people are provided a forum to identify and discuss their dreams and challenges they’ll need to overcome. The support includes career resources, mentorship and group workshops.
In the past, the students would present their ideas to the class at the end of the year. But for the Dream Talk, the students had a bigger audience of over 50 people from Grade 7 to 12, the PEPY Youth board and PEPY staff at Chanleas Dai Junior High School.
The goal of the talk was to assess the students’ communication skills and give them the opportunity to share their experiences about a topic related to their path of achieving their goals. Some students’ goals are to build confidence while others are to be a teacher or a comedian.
Dream Class facilitators work with the students to identify a key message and practice their presentations. Students were free to choose a topic, write their own script and present.
Lida, PEPY’s Project Manager, said, “I’m really proud that they presented very professionally. They are brought their own experience, spoke confidently and had a clear message.” Some topics included being proactive, how to be a good presenter and a personal success story of finishing grade 12 even though the student’s family was poor.
Lessons for future talks
The Dream Talk facilitators picked up a few lessons and would do the following for the next Dream Talk:

• Give students more time to prepare: While the students did a great job, they had a short amount of time to prepare their presentation.
• Have a more diverse audience: The facilitators would invite teachers, students from outside dream classes and PEPY staff.
• Promote the talk more in advance: The facilitators will inform the teachers at least two weeks before the next session and the students will be notified one week before in order to increase attendance.

Students said they learned a lot from the talks and one student said that it would be good to have more topics like time management.