Join us for another virtual Nerd Nite!

On February 25th, we’ll be live from Sam’s house!

Talk # 1: Resilience in the time of COVID by David Donaldson

Building on my TEDx, how do we remain resilient during a long-term, systemic disruption.

In October 2019 I delivered a TEDx on resilience. In it, we examined a bit of the brain science and looked at the 7 Resilience Muscles model as defined by The Resilience Alliance.

We are approaching 1 year of lockdown, 1 year of disruption, 1 year of needing to draw on our resilience muscles. Sprint vs. Marathon, in this Nerd Nite talk, we will look at how we need to approach a long term, systemic disruption differently than a short term, event disruption.

David is a professional facilitator and amateur nerd. An important arrow in his quiver is resilience. A certified Resilience Practitioner since 2017, these skills are essential both personally and professionally. While only working in the world of resilience a short time, David is proudly a long term nerd.

Talk # 2: To Nerds, With Love: An Elementary Teacher’s Reflection on Pop Culture and Fandom in the Classroom by Stephanie Cooper

Throughout Stephanie’s- aka Miss Cooper’s- 17-year-old teaching career, she has never failed to inject her fangirl enthusiasm into her lessons and extra-curricular activities with her students.  In this talk, she will explain how she has observed a change in the nearly two decades since she began educating young minds on what fandoms are a hit with students, and how her multicultural bunch has responded to the diversification of characters in comics and movies.  And as she is often known to do in everyday conversation, demonstrate how being a nerd is changing in its label and what activities have helped the next generation with understanding subjects and improving their self-esteem in performances from a Star Wars club and superhero group.

Stephanie is a teacher and nerd.