🔥 Public speaking isn’t scary. The way we teach it is!

Most students / people fear public speaking—not because they’re bad at it, but because we set them up to fail.

Think about this…

🎤 You’re 12 years old. You have to give a presentation on volcanoes. 🌋

In most schools, I see two common scenarios—there are more, of course:

✅ Option 1: You’re not really interested. You copy some facts from Wikipedia, throw together a basic slideshow, and call it a day.
✅ Option 2: You get obsessed. You watch eruption videos, learn about lava types, and even start thinking volcanoes are cool. 

But when it’s time to prep the presentation? 

No time left to prepare. You rush it. No time to practice.

📅 Presentation day:
No matter which option you chose, you’re nervous. You don’t feel like an expert. You rely on reading from your cue cards or, even worse, from the slides. You feel exposed.

📝 Then comes the disappointing grade. But what does it actually measure?

❌ If you took option 1, maybe the low grade reflects your lack of deep engagement

❌ If you took option 2, it certainly doesn’t reflect your passion—you were all in

❌ Presentation skills? But you barely had time to practice

❌ Planning skills? But your enthusiasm got in the way

And the result? Most learners walk away with negative conclusions:

🚫 "I don’t like this subject"
🚫 "I hate presenting"
🚫 "I’m bad at planning"

🔹 Here’s the real problem:
- We ask students to present before they feel like experts.
- We put them in front of an audience that isn’t engaged.
- We judge them on an experience that was set up for failure.

💡 What if we flipped the script?
Instead of forcing learners to present, we facilitate the process.
Instead of making them "perform," we help them prepare so well that they feel unstoppable.

Because when learners feel confident, something amazing happens:
👉 The audience WANTS to listen
👉 The speaker OWNS the room
👉 The grade becomes irrelevant—because they know they crushed it

So here’s my challenge to educators:

💬 What if we let students choose what they present, who they present to, how they present, and when they’re ready?

If we can’t set them up for success, we shouldn’t force them to present.
But if we CAN:
      they’ll take over the classroom
      they’ll become each other's teachers
      you can stop preaching
      you can focus even more on helping them
 

Let’s stop forcing. Let’s start facilitating.