On November 19, 2024, Moorestown Friends’ TEDx Club held its first TEDxYouth event in the auditorium, featuring five MFS students sharing their views on various topics with the theme “Students Speak On…”
The event was free and had a high turnout, with about 55 parents, faculty, and student attendees.
The TEDx Club, run by club officers Livia Kam ’26 and Ali Sabir ’26, spent a year and a half planning the event. They had to apply for a TEDx license, find speakers, and choose themes.
The student speakers were Luke Iacono ’25, Maddie Calixto ’25, Maya DeAndrea ’25, Mason Levens ’25, and Jason Youssef ’26, who spoke about struggle and success, talent vs. genius, the effectiveness of the United Nations climate policy, teaching math analytically, and problems with foreign aid, respectively.
According to Sabir, students picked their topics based on issues they were passionate about and could speak the most about. Sabir explained, “Some of them picked their capstone topics, but all of the ideas were based on choice. Most of the previous school year was spent with students picking topics.”
DeAndrea stated her approach to examining the effectiveness of the United Nations climate policy, explaining that she intentionally used “super broad language” in order to “make connections to everyday life outside of a policy context.” By “explaining everything super clearly” DeAndrea was hoping to help audience members who may struggle with understanding the content. She stated that she chose her speech topic “because it was [her] capstone project” and something she hopes “to continue studying in [her] future.”
Calixto decided to speak on “talent versus genius” and her belief of genius being the “process of expanding what we know, rather than sticking to a curriculum [to] push boundaries.”
Levens also discussed his view on teaching and learning, with a presentation on the importance of conceptual understanding in mathematics. He emphasized proof, discussion, and concept mapping in classroom settings. Additionally, he announced the introduction of an Upper School minor course that he created for Moorestown Friends School on analytical approaches to studying mathematics in the second semester.
Iacono shared his experiences with a speech impediment in academic settings through his presentation on preserving through struggle as well as how asking for help was a healthy way to push through. He also focused on the potential for toxicity in perseverance because of a “sense of ego” that causes people to want to push through “unnecessary struggle.”
Youssef and DeAndrea used a policy-oriented approach in their speeches discussing international solutions to problems.
Youssef discussed global inequality of wealth in richer countries compared to poorer countries, pointing to colonialism as a cause of this power imbalance. He closed his speech with a strong emphasis on the idea that “poor countries don’t need aid, they need justice.”
Clark Thomson, Upper School teacher and advisor of MFS’s Model United Nations program commented on his appreciation of the event. He stated that opportunities like this are “[ways] students can express their ideas” that MFS students “never [have] the opportunity to do” inside classrooms.
Berra Deryal ’26, an attendee, added to Thomson’s positive review. She stated that it was “really well done,” and that many speakers “talked from their personal experiences.” She added that the “funny pictures” in speakers’ presentations made them “very interactive.”
The MFS TEDx Club started in May of 2023 and aimed to reestablish a previous TEDx Club at the school that never had the opportunity to host an official TEDx-sponsored event. The revived club run by Kam and Sabir also seeks to help students with public speaking and sharing different perspectives with the community.
Kam stated that she reinstated the club with Sabir because it was a “big goal that [she] had for a long time” that took much work to come to fruition. However, she added that the hard work was “definitely” worth it and was “very happy with the turnout.”
