In this in-depth rhetorical analysis of beloved Rita Pierson's Ted Talk, we discuss her claim that healthy relationships between teachers and students are necessary to achieving success in the classroom. In her impassioned Ted Talk speech, the late educator Rita Pierson uses her personal experiences and playful sense of humor to convey that forming personal connections with students is key in promoting their academic success. Coming from forty years of educational work herself, Pierson approaches her peers with a fervent request: try harder to form real relationships with the budding minds that they influence every day. While Pierson does acknowledge the common issues like poverty and peer pressure that can hinder students from learning, she also suggests that healthy relationships can combat them. She insists on the importance of healthy relationships using her own wisdom, gained through years of student exposure, and convinces her audience with her warm demeanor.
Are Relationships the Key to Success?: A Rhetorical Analysis
In her impassioned Ted Talk speech, the late educator Rita Pierson uses her personal experiences and playful sense of humor to convey that forming personal connections with students is key in promoting their academic success. Coming from forty years of educational work herself, Pierson approaches her peers with a fervent request: try harder to form real relationships with the budding minds that they influence every day. While Pierson does acknowledge the common issues like poverty and peer pressure that can hinder students from learning, she also suggests that healthy relationships can combat them. She insists on the importance of healthy relationships using her own wisdom, gained through years of student exposure, and convinces her audience with her warm demeanor.
Pierson’s argument is intended to reach out to fellow educators and influencers of growing minds. Her plead for more positive connection is made persuasive by her tactful use of literary elements. By applying the ideas of the renown philosopher Aristotle, the speaker appeals to her audience through the use of logos, ethos and pathos. She begins her speech by arming her listeners with concrete facts, like the well-known hardships of students who suffer from poverty, or those who just don’t have the means to show up for class. However, Pierson also presents a solution. She presents the idea of turning the focus away from these dreary circumstances and instead putting it toward the power of positive relationships to help students achieve their goals. She backs this idea with quotes from prominent figures such as George Washington Carver, who also suggested that relationships are intertwined with learning. They both may very well be right, as current research has shown. A Review of Educational Research conducted their own analysis on this idea and many studies found that good student-teacher relations improved test scores “on practically every measure schools care about” (Sparks). Logos and the use of facts help make Pierson’s upcoming argument more understandable for her audience, who has now been given a base of information to base their decisions and opinions on.
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- Anonymous,, 2021, Are Relationships the Key to Success? A Rhetorical Analysis, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1149081
