I’ve had the joy of helping about a dozen students write speeches over the last four weeks.  It’s been an amazing experience. I think I’ve learned just as much from them as they have from me.

Cameron and I divided speech club into two levels: Dragons with Lions and Unicorns with Phoenixes. At first, I tried to replicate what was done in last year’s speech club based on the description and book I had received from Caroline. It took me about a week to realize that I was not here last summer and I did not know what had been done; we were putting on speech club for this summer’s students. 🙂

The first week I asked the students to find something that annoyed them or they thought could be improved upon. The point was to get them to take a stance on a subject or state their opinion. I tried to stay away from directly asking, “What problems exist in China?” but I still felt like I was asking them to be critical about their lives and their surroundings. Cameron made a great point and said something like, “So maybe they like to talk about the meaning of happiness or how to be content, but what’s so wrong with that. Maybe they’re on to something. Maybe we don’t talk about happiness enough in the USA.”

The following week, I took a new approach to speech club. I told them that they could write about whatever topic they wanted. The only rule was that it had to be something they were passionate about. I also incorporated fun games into speech club. I had them write and narrate a fairy tale to the their peers. I encouraged them to use hand gestures and a loud voice. Some students came up to me after class and said, “That was so cool. My first time performing in front of my class.” These changes made speech club more of a fun after school activity for the students.

But this week, it is no longer fun and games. It’s crunch time. Today, I held office hours to give students with questions a chance to ask me about their speeches. The speech contest is on Friday. I know each of these students’ speeches by heart now and although I continue to give them advice, I have to say, I’m very impressed by what they’ve come up with. They went from not being able to choose a topic to having complete speeches about a topic that really interests them! I can’t wait to hear them on Friday.

Shout out to Miryam and Eliot who have also been running the Unicorn/Phoenix part of Speech Club!

*Another shout out to Sofia, who has been giving great advice on performing speeches during her individual sessions. 🙂 Teamwork rules!