TEDxTheMastersSchool

TheMastersSchool

Experimental Theater May 20, 2017 2:00 PM tedxthemastersschool.com

1

The Masters School is a diverse community, and its members are independent thinkers who care about and support a wide range of interests, ideas and causes. During our TEDx event, speakers will present a variety of thought-provoking topics with the ultimate goal of sparking conversation, engaging in civil discourse and raising awareness. The TEDx presentations at The Masters School will tackle social, political, economic, scientific and environmental issues.

What is TEDx? In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxTheMastersSchool, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxTheMastersSchool event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

TheMastersSchool Experimental Theater May 20, 2017, 2:00 PM Family Secrets Tulay Akoglu Educating Girls: a Global Perspective Sophia Brousset Dyslexia and Privilege Sam Coppola Peace and Our Relationship with the Earth Jared Foxhall Overcoming Anxiety Jonas Kolker Embracing the Facade Julia Mathas Parenting Styles Scout O’Donnell Diversity in the Corporate World Ahnaf Taha Context, Bigotry and Privilege Amanda Taylor Is History in the Eyes of the Beholder?

Kree Zhang Talks are listed alphabetically by speaker.

TEDx Talks and Speakers Listed alphabetically by speaker

Family Secrets Tulay Akoglu will explore violence and family secrets. How do families grapple with violent pasts? How do family traits and coping mechanisms get passed down to the next generations? How does migration and immigration help to complicate this narrative? Both personal and statistical data will be used to explore these questions.

Tulay Akoglu is an 18-year-old Japanese-Turkish American from New York. As a person of mixed race, she has been grappling with identity and culture since before she could even comprehend those ideas. In her TEDx talk, Tulay explores her family’s past and how culture has been used as an excuse for domestic abuse and its secrecy. Tackling an intense and deeply personal topic, she opens up a dialogue between her audience and herself about why this pervasive issue continues to be a cornerstone in many families, including her own.

Educating Girls: a Global Perspective Sophia Brousset’s talk will explore the need for girls’ education to remain at the center of development discussions. Research will focus primarily on Peru as a case study.

Reflecting on her personal experiences as the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and her time living in Peru, Sophia Brousset discusses the transformative impact of a good-quality education on young girls in the developing world and on society as a whole.

Dyslexia and Privilege Sam Coppola’s talk will explore the services, particularly for learningdifferent individuals, that are based on economic circumstances. The speaker, diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age, well understands the privileges she was afforded based on fee-based services.

Samantha Coppola is 18 years old and a senior at The Masters School. She has spoken about dyslexia to teachers and elementary school students at multiple private schools throughout Westchester County. In the fall, she will be attending NYU Tisch School of the Arts to study drama.

4

Peace and Our Relationship with the Earth Jared Foxhall’s talk will explore various ways in which peace initiatives that involve working with the earth have been effective.

Jared Foxhall’s early exposure to a nature-centered curriculum as a homeschooler has instilled in him a staunch advocacy for the Earth. To Jared, nature is not a luxury. Jared sees nature as a crucial element of the human experience. His talk advocates for nature’s integration with the spaces we occupy daily at work and at school. He sees nature as having the capacity to foster wholesome individuals and as a catalyst for growth and development.

Overcoming Anxiety Jonas Kolker’s talk will explore the concept of “embracing the suck.” How does one turn a diagnosis into activism, empowerment and coaching?

Jonas Kolker is a 15-year-old in the ninth grade. From grades three through eight, he dealt with severe anxiety attacks that were triggered by his school environment. Jonas had to learn techniques and strategies that would help him manage and control his ideas as he progressed through his school career. Through his experiences, Jonas has learned about the workings of the brain, as well as the common fears we all have to deal with every day.

Embracing the Facade “Just be yourself.” How can anyone—especially teenagers—accomplish this when they don’t know who they are? Challenge your understanding of yourself. Take a more active role in whom you portray. Julia explains how to use façades to create the person you want to be.

Student, writer, still figuring it out. Julia Mathas is a sophomore at The Masters School and has a passion for theater, science, the classics and writing.

5

Parenting Styles Scout O’Donnell’s talk will explore the current trends in parenting science from both a sociological perspective and from the point of view of children.

Named after the strong-minded, independent young girl in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout O’Donnell grew up in Vermont and Connecticut. The alternative ways in which her parents chose to raise her contradicted the ways experienced by her peers at the competitive prep school she attended in her early years. In this TEDx talk, she relates her story of maturing into the independent girl she was named after. She shares not a doctor’s perspective or that of a parent or psychologist, but her own perspective on the best way to raise a child and progress in society as a product of alternative parenting.

Diversity in the Corporate World Ahnaf Taha’s talk will focus on minority leadership in the technological industries. Why is it lacking? What is being done to counter this reality?

A study of youth outreach in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) will be undertaken to address possible solutions to this issue.

Ahnaf Taha is a junior at The Masters School with interests in technology and social change. His TEDx talk represents a combination of these two passions: how more STEM education can help combat the technology industry’s lack of diversity and help lower-income students escape socio-economic inequality.

Outside of school, he is heavily involved in hosting hackathons and coding sessions for fifth and sixth graders in New York City.

6

Context, Bigotry and Privilege Amanda Taylor’s talk will explore the various intersections of race and power within different contexts. The primary focus will be on Jamaica and the United States. Field research and personal accounts will be interwoven into this talk.

“Whiteness is simply an abstraction,” Amanda Taylor argues. The 18-year-old international student from Kingston, Jamaica moved to Dobbs Ferry, NY to study in August 2015. In her talk, she tackles privilege from a different lens, exploring the ever-pervasive nature of a dominant norm that structures social encounters in order to illustrate how it relates to the way people around the world are perceived to be racially different.

Is History in the Eyes of the Beholder?

Kree Zhang’s talk will investigate the ways that teenagers use coded language and techniques to circumvent censorship—both governmental and parental. Comparisons will be made between American teens and Chinese teens. The ways in which teenagers have used technology to find a political voice will be central to this work. Field work will include interviews.

Now a senior at The Masters School, Kree Zhang was born and raised in China, where she was taught by her teachers and parents to shy away from sensitive political topics since early childhood.

Kree, however, never stopped trying to uncover and evaluate the hidden politics of China. Having studied in the U.S. for the past four years, she now freely engages in social activism offline and online and has learned the importance of political education and different historical perspectives in understanding a country’s past.

She believes that only in this way can the younger generation develop a well-informed, politically engaged sense of self.

7

Special thanks to Head of School Laura Danforth for believing in the potential of this event and to all the students, faculty and staff who dedicated their time, skills and effort to making it a reality.

The Masters School | 49 Clinton Avenue | Dobbs Ferry, NY | www.mastersny.org