Presentations

There’s Something to be Said about the Unheard Voices | Mark Kawakami | TEDxMaastricht

One might think that Mark has many experiences and ideas worth sharing. While this is certainly true, he believes that he needs to listen more instead. ‘If we only listen to important people, aren’t we missing out on something?’ In other words, are we doing ourselves any favors by listening only to good or smart ideas? After all, if we don’t listen – even to voices that we might not agree with or deem worthy – we might never change our perspective. PhD fellow and teacher at the Maastricht University Faculty of Law, Mark Kawakami deeply cares about creating a better dialogue between students and the teaching staff. He firmly believes that education should be modernized and that teachers could learn a lot from listening to their students more. Mark Kawakami is born in Japan, moved to Hawaii, went to boarding schools in New England, trained as a Buddhist monk, served as a cadet at the US Military Academy, worked as an attorney in New York, and now a PhD fellow at Maastricht University, As a teacher at the Maastricht University Faculty of Law, Mark deeply cares about creating a better dialogue between students and the teaching staff. He firmly believes that education should be modernized and that teachers could learn a lot from listening to their students more. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

The Teacher Who Learned to Listen| Mark Kawakami | PechaKucha Maastricht

"Teaching isn’t just about bestowing substantive knowledge to students. It’s about teaching them and giving them experiences that Google can’t."It is easy to grasp the concept that communication is a two-way street but how many of us really put the theory into practice? How easily do we fall on the default of just trying to put our point across, specially if we think about education?

This was "PechaKucha of the Day" on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2016.