Sophomore Speech

 

There's a new terror in my house.  Rosie is combining her worst fear of writing (composition) with her new fear of public speaking in a rite of passage called

 

The SOPHOMORE SPEECH.

 

Every kid in the 10th grade has to write a paper on a topic that means something to them and then present it (by memory) to his or her English class.  The lucky (or unlucky??) few that are deemed the best go on to some sort of semi-finals and present the speech in front of ever larger numbers of people.

 

Rosie had a very firm idea that she wanted to write about teenage self-image and how other kids affect that image by their actions.  After looking at three libraries, she finally found a book on that topic to guide her in this speech.

 

So the research and writing was coming along, but then they  needed to hand in the outline.  And the teachers were working with them on their presentation skills.

 

This is the girl who normally is very out-going and might I say, enthusiastically vocal?  But I remember, at her Bat Mitzvah, all of a sudden, no one could hear her even with the microphone  right in front of her face.  But I chalked it up to the Bat Mitzvah itself and not public speaking.

 

I was probably wrong.  It definitely was the public aspect of it that was (and is) freaking her out.

 

But the English classes took them through a process to help them develop this skill.  Last week, the kids all had to stand up and present one sentence from their talk to the class.  Rosie said that she was absolutely terrified, but when she stood up and concentrated on remembering the line, she was fine because she was working so hard at remembering what she was going to say.

 

 

All of the feed-back that I got (from her) about the actual presentation of the full speech was that it went....  She didn't think that she did that well, but neither did she think that she did badly.  The kids are graded both on the presentation, as well as the actual report.  Let's just say that English and writing are not her strong points (although they could be if she wanted to invest a little effort). 

 

But the hard part is over and it's on to the next challenge.

Comments

[songbird]

I'm glad she met the challenge. both now and at her bat mitzvah. My cousin's daugther was so overcome with emotion at her bat mitzvah that sh asked the Rabbi to read her speech for her!

[Daisy]

Good luck to her! I never considered myself a public speaker...until I began teaching. Then I realized I speak to the toughest audience in the world for several hours a day.