Most likely no blog post next week, taking some time to enjoy summer.

My kids just lectured me about how most adult presenters do a horrible job presenting to youth. Since I had to sit through the lecture, I thought I’d pass along some of the wisdom.  I sent the kids to bed so I can write, please check back to the original blog post since I may make corrections or additions once the youth of the house review it.

Why is this on a racial equity blog? Many times, I preach about reaching out and hearing from a lot of different people. Youth often have opinions about things that impact them and we should work hard to listen and include their views. According to the sample size of 2 (my own kids) they feel the adults they interact with need to spiffy up their presentations and interactions. Take what you want from this post and make sure to ask other youth from your own community how to make your presentations and interactions more relatable.

Rule #1 Make Yourself Credible and Relatable.

Introduce yourself and lead with your credentials or at least explain why you’re speaking and why they should care. Both of my kids said to embellish this a little if needed. They also said to make sure to make your credentials relatable to the youth. If you have an obscure job title, explain what it is and why it relates to them. As an example, my kids are really not impressed with my job if I say “I work in education policy,” snooze fest. If I say, “I work with others to make the rules that govern your school day,” they perk up and suddenly have a ton of opinions about how their school days could be better. I might be stretching a little, but that could be a definition for education policy.

Also don’t be the cringy adult that tries too hard to be one of them.

Don’t be a guest speaker during lunch.

Youth really hate it when you are a guest speaker during their free period. If someone invites you to be a guest speaker during lunch or breaktime, you’re sunk. Maybe ask to speak at another time when the kids will more likely want to hear your message.

Make it Interactive.

If you do present during lunch, make the presentation interactive. Not cheesy interactive, but ways to draw them in. Group activities with their friends is a good way to keep them engaged.

Don’t over explain, make sure the kids can understand it quickly.

If you can’t explain the concept quickly, then you’re sunk. The information needs to be relatable and understandable. Don’t talk down to the youth, but keep the presentation understandable. This is also important if you have an audience with immigrants or English learners – can they understand the presentation and keep up?  

Keep Your Presentation Slides Engaging and Simple.

If you PowerPoint slide has a lot of text the youth will glaze over it and tune you out, trust me I watched them do that when I showed them a sample PPT deck – they critiqued it to smithereens, the only thing they praised was a picture of Amanda Gorman I had stylishly placed after watching some Instagram Reels on how to make fancy slides. My younger kid will tune you out if your PPT deck is bland. She likes making presentation decks so she knows what she’s looking for. It must have relevant information, but not too much. Have a decent background, but not too cluttered – big no to the plain white background. The fonts and colors need to be easily read, which is also important for visual accessibility.

Make your point, don’t let the kids get bored.

Keep your presentation on point. If you drone on for too long the youth will tune you out and will let you know it. It isn’t disrespectful behavior, it is mirroring back what they think of your presentation.

Give them real world problems you are grappling with.

The youth are smart and have a lot of different perspectives on problems. As we were talking about how to keep presentations relevant they asked about my day job and said their cohort of classmates would have a lot of thoughts about how to fix education. They said bring problems to them and elicit their real world experience to help come up with solutions.

They said the problems should be presented well and in ways that are relatable and understandable (see prior points). Some of their answers might not work in real life BUT that is the point, often adults have too much information and we miss the kernels of new original thinking. The kernels can lead to new ways of seeing a problem and coming up with a different solution that works better for youth.

Manage the room fairly.

One of the pet peeves of my kids is when adults are not fair. Youth know when you’re not being fair with the entire group. Watch your biases and manage your presentation in ways that allows for everyone to participate fairly. Pay attention to who you call on, where you look, who you’re relating to and who you’re having a harder time relating to. The kids catch these clues and will either engage more if they can tune into you, or tune you out if you’re subtly tuning them out.

Don’t Disrespect Them.

If you are presenting at the youth, you’ve lost them. Don’t disrespect them because you think you have a captured audience and some other adult is forcing them to listen to you. Respect their time and attention, be prepared, be engaging, and relatable. Make them care about whatever you’re talking about.

Good luck. I hope you get to interact with youth soon. Listen to them and ask for their feedback. Maybe we’ll solve some big problems with their fresh insights.

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