Our last Design and Delivery Class

We watched this the other night in class and it was a really refreshing and inspirational presentation to watch for our last class.

Ngahi Bidois talks on leadership and there are three parts in his talk that stand out for me. The first being about how he became who he is today and his influences when he was growing up, looking at proverbs, people and purpose and looking into the mirror and asking the right questions to increase your influence.

I think at some stage in our lives we have all had someone or somebody say to us "you can't do that" and it was inspiring to see Ngahi pull him self away from the negative put downs and believe in himself. This was mainly due to his grandma who said "The thought creates the person"-and then said "it doesn't matter what other people think of you it matters what you think of you". The mind is a powerful tool and I believe that if you understand yourself and who you are as a person you can achieve anything you want to. His story talks about how he went from this high flying job to having no money at all and having to receive food parcels then again rising to becoming a motivational leadership presenter. He talks about how he turned his back on his heritage and culture, so then takes a year off to learn the Maori language and become one with his culture. He then asked "who have you turned your back on?" I think most of us can say at some stage we have turned our backs on somebody who needed us. As a teacher there will always be students you click with and who understand what you are teaching and you tend to focus more on those students. There are also those students who maybe don't get as much of our time as you think, or maybe don't feel as valued as other students in the class. I think this has been a great lesson in regards to embracing all students no matter their ability and give everybody and I mean everybody a chance to achieve. To not turn your back on people and to give everyone you meet a chance.

Who is your eagle? was another question raised in the presentation. It was referring to who are those people who influence you. For me being a beginning lecturer here at MIT I have colleagues above me with years of experience and knowledge and feel empowered by the department I work in. They have all come from different backgrounds with outstanding amounts of experience in the sporting industry and feel lucky to be working along side them so that I can better my learning. Its not only people who I work with but people who surround me with their skills and success in other areas that I really look up too.

Overall the design and delivery paper has given us some great tools to utalise in our teaching area's even if we are lacking in technology, it just challenges us to think outside the square and be more creative with how we teach our content to better our students.