In a cold, unfamiliar classroom, with feelings of butterflies in your stomach, and the sound of judges typing while people glance at you, you stand there as nerves take over and the speech you practiced for the whole season suddenly disappears.
Some PLHS students who are willing to improve their public speaking are competing in tournaments. These special events help students to build confidence, engage with other students, and experience unique opportunities to speak in front of people while also learning from other speeches.
Speech club, run by Ms. Lizzy Janssen in PLHS, is an opportunity for students to improve their speaking skills and also strengthen their writing skills. This school year’s speech season is almost ending with achievements that students in PLHS earned during this speech season and the last event of this activity will be Speech district which is scheduled for March 13th. Two students of PLHS are getting ready to compete in the speech district nowadays.
Junior Viviene Agar is one of these two speech students. She has fully memorized everything at this point, but with school work and responsibilities she can’t practice her speech, and these days she goes back to make sure that she has memorized her script and ready to compete in districts.
“I’m a bit nervous even though she [Janssen] says it is smaller than normal competitions,” Agar said. “But it’s kinda fun to see how I almost ended a speech season this year.”
In addition, for Sophomore Ashely Torres Castellanos, district means improvement. She is reading her speech every day to try to get memorized.
“This is my first year, if I place something in districts, I’ll be really happy,” Torres said. “But I also think competing in the district will help me improve so I can be better next year.”
Agar gave speeches during her freshman year when she would get very nervous, hot, and start shaking while speaking really fast. After her best friend, Kimberlin Hays wanted to do speech, Agar decided she had to do it too, hoping it would help her improve her speaking.
“At this point I really enjoy speech and have a lot of fun doing it, but I remember my first speech competition,” Agar said. “I was so nervous and I also was the first to perform.”
Subsequently, Torres also got interested last year when she had to give speeches in 9th grade and it went really bad. So she wanted to improve her public speaking skills this year.
“When I’m getting nervous during giving a speech, I just channel it into my speech, like facial expressions, like sometimes they tell me like I do a bunch of random movements or touch my hair a lot,” Torres said. “I’m just trying to focus on my speech while unintentionally doing them.”
However, Agar wants to get into journalism and write in the future. She thinks speech will benefit her because in journalism she might do reporting and speech will be helpful for her to speak confidently.
“It’s easier to speak in front of people you don’t know even if you’ve seen them at other tournaments, they don’t really know you,” Agar said. “Speech just made me more confident and [earned] some speaking skills.”
Torres feels speech made her more confident. She also is more comfortable giving a speech in front of people that she doesn’t know.
“It is better if I don’t know them because then I don’t have to live up like, Oh My Gosh, if I embarrass myself they are gonna see me again,” Torres said. “No, they are never gonna see me again outside of tournaments, if I embarrass myself it’s fine.”
However, speaking in public is challenging for all, highlighting the dedication and hard work of speech students of PLHS whose goal was to face their fears and overcome them and inspire others to recognize the importance of their voice. Thanks to the Speech team for their participation and courage throughout the 25-26 speech season. Through their works they not only improved their own confidence but also encouraged others to speak up. Anyone can use their voice, everyone should use their voice and make an impact. Yes, your voice matters.
