For the past three days, Boston Teen Enrichment Camp has been at Harvard working with Professor Remo — a teacher beloved by Harvard students — practicing public speaking. And once again, I watched these kids transform.

American children do Show and Tell from kindergarten. Come back from a trip, bring a souvenir, show the class, tell the story. When I was teaching English in Beijing, I ended every class with one or two students doing their own version of Show and Tell. Over time, those kids became noticeably more natural and confident speaking in front of others, speaking in English. I’ve lived that proof: when children are given the right training, they become different.

Public speaking deserves to be taken seriously and trained deliberately. Two reasons.

First, standing in front of people and talking is humanity’s most universal fear. In 1973, an American polling firm asked three thousand people what they feared most. Forty-one percent listed public speaking as their greatest fear — above death. A more rigorous replication study in 2012 found the same: when people are asked to name their fears, public speaking is chosen more often than anything else, more often than dying. This is not an American fear, not just a Chinese fear. It is what most human beings are wired to dread.

Second, on top of this universal fear, our Chinese children carry two additional burdens.

One is cultural. Our education teaches children to listen, to follow the rules, to avoid mistakes, to avoid standing out. “The bird that sticks its head up gets shot.” “Too much talk leads to mistakes.” “Silence is golden.” The proverbs a Chinese child hears growing up about “talking” are almost uniformly advice to say less. Growing up in that culture, speaking your mind in front of others means climbing over not just nerves, but a decade-plus of default wiring.

The other is age. Adolescents genuinely believe that everyone is watching them, judging them. At this age, a child would rather not try than try and fail; rather stay silent than be embarrassed.

The universal human fear of public speaking, layered onto a culture that trains silence, layered onto adolescent self-consciousness — that is what our children carry to the stage before they even open their mouths.

When I came to the United States to continue my education, I noticed that my Chinese classmates were always the ones with ideas they didn’t voice. In the workplace too: often silent, often conflict-avoidant. We don’t lack intelligence. We don’t lack diligence. We don’t lack depth. What we lack is the courage and the skill to say these things out loud. I don’t want us to become a silent group, an invisible group. So when I designed this camp’s curriculum, the first course I locked in was public speaking. I wanted the best teacher I could find, working directly with each child — to build people who dare to speak up, and know how.

The teacher for this course is Professor Remo, who graduated from Harvard as an undergraduate and now teaches there. On the first day of class, he told the students his story.

He immigrated to the United States at fifteen, speaking no English. He described himself then: “I felt invisible, like I didn’t exist.” To break through, he enrolled in public speaking classes and practiced over and over again. His language limitations kept him from earning top grades in high school. But as an immigrant, he desperately wanted to attend the best university he could. He decided to apply to Harvard. The interview was scheduled for thirty minutes. He and the interviewer talked for three hours. He was accepted.

He said the work he had put into public speaking was exactly what helped him in that interview.

I have invited Professor Remo to teach this course for many years now. And every year, hearing him tell this story, I am moved again. The word I most want to help Chinese children escape — invisible — is precisely the word this Harvard professor used to describe himself at fifteen. He found his way out. Today he stands at Harvard teaching expression, teaching the inner journey he walked step by step himself.

He shared one line with the students that I believe is the heart of the entire course. People always ask him: what do you do when you’re nervous on stage? What do you do when you’re afraid of embarrassing yourself? He says those aren’t really what you should be afraid of:

This public speaking course is not what you might imagine — rows of desks, lecture notes. Day one has no technique at all. It’s games. Gladiator. Musical chairs. Mirror exercises. On the lawn outside Harvard Law School, shouting and jumping. These games look strange. Their purpose is singular: to get each student to be a little embarrassed, over and over, and then discover that after the embarrassment the sky is still there. As Alan put it precisely in his journal: “We played a lot of games to get used to being embarrassed.” The enemy of public speaking is never just language ability, never just lack of technique — it is the fear of being embarrassed. Dissolve the fear first, and technique actually sticks.

Professor Remo’s technique teaching is precise and specific. The Triangle Method: open at center stage, move to three points for your three main ideas, return to center and step forward for the conclusion. Hands have a “rest position” — not in pockets, not touching hair, not adjusting glasses. Balance gesture with stillness. And on forgetting your place: “The audience doesn’t know what you were supposed to say. You just keep going like nothing’s wrong.”

Every student’s speech was recorded on video, and each student watched themselves back. As Remo says: “You will not believe me until you actually watch yourself.” Students watching their own footage, combined with what they’d learned, upgraded quickly. Mia only discovered by watching her video that when she was nervous she kept touching her hair, and that when talking to someone taller she unconsciously rose up on her toes. Change begins with seeing.

Remo also coached each student one-on-one. He identified a single habit for each person to work on, then checked in the next day. At the final, he told one student who had stopped putting their hands in their pockets: “You’ve transformed.” He told Sherry, who touched her hair only once: “We talked about this yesterday. You did it.” Every piece of feedback: loud affirmation first, then a check on yesterday’s improvement, then one new suggestion only. One change at a time — so students feel genuinely seen while also knowing exactly where to grow next.

Some moments went beyond technique. When Simon mentioned in his speech that he had once taken time away from school but didn’t want to explain further, Remo said: “That’s your right, to be private about your life. You don’t have to share everything.” When Vicky said she wanted to be a lawyer because it pays well, he didn’t evaluate. He just kept asking: is there another reason you like the idea of being a lawyer? Until Vicky found her own answer: “It can also help a lot of people.”

For the final session, every student dressed in formal attire and spoke about their dreams or something they wanted to share. The students prepared seriously. Joey — heading to university at fifteen — spoke about his relationship with mathematics and his CMO silver medal. Sophia spoke about curiosity. Charlie told the story of a Sichuan Airlines captain. Anna spoke in Chinese about a twelve-year friendship and choked up at the line “no one knows us the way we know each other.” Remo told her: “Never feel bad about showing emotion. You’re very brave to show emotion.”

I want to linger on Mike.

Mike has the weakest English foundations in the group. For every other student, this speech was a challenge. For him, it was close to impossible. He started writing his draft days in advance and practiced it over and over. On stage, he built the speech almost word by word, getting stuck multiple times. Each time he got stuck, the room fell quiet and waited — because he showed not a single impulse to stop. He was utterly determined to finish. Everyone felt his seriousness and his effort.

Remo’s response:

I asked the students: do you remember what I once said courage means? Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.

The whole room applauded him for a long time. Earlier that day, Mike had set the all-time camp record in the “Um Competition” — speaking for nearly two minutes without a single filler word. And now, using the language he is currently weakest in, he had just completed the bravest challenge in the room.

The day of the final speeches happened to be Jack’s twelfth birthday. The whole room sang to him. He gave a speech to celebrate himself. I told him afterwards: I noticed that every single time Remo gave you a note, the next time you had already fixed it. You’re a fast-iterating person. In one week, you are already Jack 2.0.

These three days with Professor Remo, every student now has a recording of themselves standing on a stage, speaking. Years from now they may forget the Triangle Method. They may forget what to do with their hands. But I hope they remember the one thing these days confirmed: I stood up there. I finished. The sky did not fall.

One observation: the Chinese American kids who grew up in the United States tend to be more at ease at the front of the room. Alan always went first, Mia never hesitated. At the same time, over the past three years at this camp, the children who grew up in China have changed enormously — stronger English, more at ease on stage, more fully themselves.

What I see in these kids right now tells me: we are no longer a silent group. We will not be invisible anymore.

The children grow, and I grow with them — following their trains of thought, keeping pace with their steps. One of life’s great privileges.