Elevator Speeches, Super Bowl and Valentine's Day

From Guest Blogger Carolyn Panzarella, Community MVPs Intern....

The Community MVPs classroom has been bustling with activity in the last few weeks.  As always, we have been continuing practicing public speaking.  All this practice will be put into use in the coming months when we will be putting on more workshops. 

The students have been practicing their elevator speeches:  a short summary used to quickly and simply define a product, service, or organization and its value proposition.  We have done a number of exercises to perfect their speeches including volume practice in the big hall downstairs, as projecting voices is always a difficult task, and writing out the speech and pitching it to the class.  

Finally, with guest judges Paul, Binni, and Claire the students went one by one on an elevator ride to pitch their elevator speech to the judges.  Although a bit nerve-racking everyone did a great job.  I believe we’re on our way to a having group of polished public speakerS!
  

On the cooking front, we have done some themed classes for the many events occurring at this time of the year.  Our Super Bowl class was full of healthy appetizers including spinach balls, black bean hummus, a variation on jalapeno poppers and some parmesan crusted zucchini sticks.  The recipes were a hit and hopefully will be made for next year’s Super Bowl.  Yea Giants!   For our Valentines Day class we made chocolate chip pancakes and whole wheat crepes.  The students made heart -shaped pancakes and were quite creative with the crepe batter, making different shapes and words.  The breakfast meal was topped off with a delicious strawberry sauce.    In the coming weeks ,we will continue practicing public speaking and cooking and start preparing for the upcoming workshops.  The next workshop is on Tuesday February 28th at MacFarland Middle School.  Wish us luck!!