Expect The Best From Yourself: Small Details Matter

Tuesday I am delivering my first education presentation ever. I am nervous. I feel prepared. I spent most of today finalized everything. I will admit that I feel good about what I put together. With anything, I had tremendous help from so many people helping me, offering ideas, suggestions, topics, links, etc. Amanda had to check out all things today when she had other issues.

I have high expectations for my students. Ask any of my 6th grade students that I just wrapped up an extension with and they will tell that I expect a lot from them. In order to expect great things from others you have to expect a lot from yourself.

That is the reason for this post. I want to show my students and others that small details make a difference.

Today I spent more time that necessary working on the layout of my handout. I was not going to hand anything out, but I was advised that teachers love handouts so I agreed.

I started out with this version to begin with:

I used my own face as images because I could not find what I wanted. I originally liked this one quite a bit. However, it was pointed out to me that the glare in the posters behind were tacky. Then I thought that an image of myself could come across as conceited.

So I moved to version 2.0

I was trying to achieve a Zen like approach, but this just seemed to be "off". I don't know, but it did not work and I was frustrated. Then it hit me and I came up with version 3.0

I started to really like where this was headed, but this was still not quite right. I changed some fonts, increased the images just a tad to eliminate white space and reduced some dark shades of black and came up with the final version.

Yes, that looks nice. I like this handout. This is one sharp looking handout.

I expect a lot from myself. This is just a silly handout. The real worth of my presentation is all online with my Google Document and the slides and the website I built for one 60 minute talk.

So, to all my students. I do have high expectations. I expect great things from myself and my family. I expect great things from my colleagues. I expect great things from all people. Why not work to your potential? We are only here for so long so what will your mark be that you leave behind?

In case you care all things for my presentation can be found here on the website I built - http://coffeechug2.wikispaces.com/

Feel free to check it out. As always leave any suggestions or ideas as there is still time to make any necessary changes.