No, I was being summoned to the principal’s office at Lakeview Elementary in Burnaby to receive instructions about being a judge. I was invited to be one of three judges for the zone finals of the Burnaby School District’s public speaking challenge. My zone was Central West, with two students each from 10 different schools competing.
They sat us down at tables in the Lakeview gym, which looks exactly like every other elementary school I’ve ever been in. Seriously, why do these gyms never have any windows or natural light? In front of us were nervous-looking parents waiting for their kids to come out and give a short speech on a topic.
Now, there is some irony at play here when you consider me being chosen to judge anyone on public speaking. I love public speaking, but in no way does that mean that I am any good at it. Far from it. I tend to ramble and jump around with strange, improvisational anecdotes that take me a long time to get through before veering back to the original topic. I also tend to mumble and tell jokes that don’t always get laughs and make people feel uncomfortable because nobody likes eerie silence during a public speech.
And yet, I still love speaking in public (not that many actually ask to me to do so). So, here I was on Thursday put in the position of judging others – in this case, kids who were 12 years old. I mentioned earlier that the parents seemed nervous. The kids, however, seemed pretty calm about the whole thing. Public speaking tends to terrify some people, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the students.
One by one they came in and stood in front of a podium and discussed their chosen topic. A lot of the speeches were about the power of youth and how young people are constantly underestimated. We heard the phrase “We are young, but we are…” a lot in the speeches as the youth built their case for why young people deserve to be consulted more about important issues.
The days of “children should be seen and not heard” will hopefully one day be killed by fire because youth have some fantastic ideas. Other speech topics included anxiety disorders, the tech industry, bullying and the fentanyl crisis. All were backed up with solid facts. During a brief break that I forced the organizers to take because I needed to go to the little boy’s room, I thought to myself how far ahead these kids were from who I was when I was 12. I distinctly remember freezing up like a popsicle while trying to give a speech in Grade 7 in Mr. Shanks’ class at Parkcrest Elementary. It was terrifying.
But these kids were so poised and focused – so forceful in making their points. They weren’t simply reading off of the cue cards – they were having a conversation with the audience about topics that were important to them. Some shared really personal stories about how their topic had affected them. One student talked about breaking his ankle playing sports and how devastating that was to his life – and how others rallied to support him.
Another speaker talked about being called a racial epithet in the playground and how he had dealt with his anger about it in the year since the incident had happened. It was so raw and startling. It was also inspirational in how this boy had used this abuse to make himself a better person. The hardest part of the afternoon was when we as judges had to pick two out of the 20 students to go on to the school district finals.
It was a tough call. Tougher than I thought it would be. In the end, we chose Annika Segovia and Aiden Tailor. I wish them the best of luck competing against the six students chosen from the other three zone finals.
