Dave Eggers TED Talk

A pirate store, tutoring and time traveling. Dave Eggers is able to use a very right brained approach and pull together three seemingly unrelated ideas and produce a pretty good speech. This off the bat relates to Dan Pink's ideas, but the idea of intrinsic motivation is really the driving force of what Dave Eggers is trying to get across. He works at a pirate shop tutoring center and wants kids to get the one on one help they deserve in schooling that they simply can not get at schools. He and a bunch of other tutors sit down and help kids with their schoolwork for free because they see a problem in the schooling system and want to try to solve this problem. This program is especially helpful to these specific kids because it is a poorer section of town and their homes tend to not be the best places to do homework.

Dave Eggers speaking style was not particularly effective I thought, and it is too bad because the topic he was trying to get across was an important one for people to hear. I personally felt as though he dragged on with the same subjects for too long and probably should have put a couple more examples in there and kept the audience on their toes. When the speaker changes subjects somewhat frequently without getting off topic it is very effective because it keeps the listeners on their toes and still gets the point across. With Eggers he must have talked about his own little pirate shop with a tutoring center for half of the time, and I felt myself dosing off at times. The humor though did get me a little more engaged because who can't pay attention to a tutoring center that doubles as a time travel specialty shop or a super hero supply vendor.

I think that this easy to access one on one tutoring is a really good idea because as class sizes continue to grow with budget cuts it seems as though students get less and less attention. Our school's offerings such as writing lab and spanish lab are good and I think are on the right track to what Eggers is talking about. Sometimes though when I go to writing lab it is like the teachers are just trying to hustle me out of there instead of really trying to help. I have never been to spanish lab so I can't call that out, but I think it is better to hold this kind of thing after school because then you will find the tutors that really want to stay and help the kids while those that don't can just leave and do something else. I personally feel like I learn a lot better one on one with a teacher because all of their attention and effort is focused on you and the teachers seem to get more involved. I think maybe in our five day a week classes we should have a day every two weeks that is just reserved for one on one help with students from the teacher, and those that need or want help can have easy access to it.

I think that the world really should learn from Dave Eggers's talk but widen their view on the picture he painted. Most of the time the best help comes from a one on one talk rather than in a group. Whether that be how to hold a rifle better in the Army or how to better start a campfire in Boy Scouts, I feel as though more one on one attention needs to be given. Plus, when the original instructor is not available, people like Dave Eggers need to be willing to step up and volunteer their efforts to help these people.