Rally Cap Consulting

For a High School Admissions Representative, the high schools are where you generate your leads, so it is the first step in building a successful operation for yourself. Amazingly, high school admissions representatives across the country seem quite content to walk into a high school classroom and wing it. If you had to give a speech tomorrow and the outcome of that speech determined whether or not you received $40,000, do you think you would spend some time practicing? Of course you would. Your high school presentation is roughly the same thing, but the stakes are often high both monetarily and otherwise. Be a professional, practice and perfect your craft.

Learning how to fire up the high school student and supercharge your presentation experience in the classroom is what will differentiate you and your school from the competition. A differentiated presentation means finding ways to reach every student in the classroom. It can be especially difficult to motivate and touch every student in a classroom with widely varying levels of interest. You do not want to present over any of your students and we absolutely cannot water down our presentations to reach to the lower levels. Closing the gap means that we need to keep all of our students motivated.

It is important that we understand who our audience is. As high school admissions representatives we have to realize that today’s students are different than those we saw as few as five years ago. Commonly known as Generation Y (those born between 1980-1994), is an entire generation whose perception of information, reality, authority, respect, privilege, rules, culture, right, and wrong is vastly different than that of those who have gone before them. They simply refuse to do the what, before they know the why. However, instead of fighting them, if we change the way we view them and how we communicate with them, the results are astounding.

Traditional teaching tells us that we are forced to sit and listen. When in actuality, teaching is getting people involved. It means getting their hands dirty and giving them an experience. We need to allow them to discover things on their own. The word educate comes from the word educare which means to draw out, not cram into. There is a big difference between asking and telling. There is a difference between pulling information and trying to push people. There is a difference between boring people and motivating them. As a presenter, you need to ask if your audience is embodying the information that you are trying to give them immediately, so that they are able to use it immediately. The goal of a great presenter is to impart great information, to empower others to be the best that they can be.

Our goal is to have you become the presenter who is not just covering content, one who is not just happy that people are not falling asleep and one who is not just happy that you got them in the room. But, we want you to be a presenter who is lighting them up and that you are the one that they are going to remember for years to come. People learn in different ways. You need to be able to “hook” your audience. Your high school audience is always going to ask themselves, “What is in it for me?” Remember WIIIFM. The students are going to ask themselves, “Why should I listen to you?” “Why should I go to school?” “Why should I believe in you?”

What we know is that if your audience is having fun, they are going to learn faster, they are going to learn easier and they are going to hold onto the information even longer. All people learn through three modalities. These modalities are auditory (hearing), visual (seeing) and kinesthetic (touching or feeling). Research tells us that if we can use multiple modalities in our presentations, those students will be engaged more and they will retain more of the information that we present to them. Every time someone is “bored” learning has stopped. Your audience is a mirror of you. If you are uptight, your audience will be uptight as well! If you are having fun, so too will they!