Since the wintry days of early January, a dozen members of Tyrone Area High’s speech team have faithfully struggled to improve their speaking skills at weekly practices each Thursday.
Tomorrow, as spring sneaks into central PA, this motley crew of characters will travel to Juniata Valley High School in Alexandria to participate in a Spring Speech Convention. At this speech convocation, high school students from across central PA will perform world class poetry and prose, receive evaluations from experienced speech judges, dine with other teens in the speech league and attend an awards ceremony that emphasizes how polishing speaking skills provides the power to enhance the lives of speaker and listener alike.
Almost 60 high school students from Juniata Valley, Southern Huntingdon, Tyrone and Williamsburg High Schools will participate in this event, lasting from 3:30 until 7:30 p.m. Students from Tyrone will perform a diverse repertoire of literature ranging from traditional Robert Frost poems rooted in the New England countryside to the troubled lyrics of poet Sylvia Plath, who speaks bitterly about her Nazi father. Other members of Tyrone’s speech team will follow a more light-hearted path as they perform humorous poems about birds, squirrels or buffalo crossing a lake in winter.
During these poetry performances, experienced speech judges from Juniata Valley will evaluate each student presentation twice by asking these five questions:
• Was the poem suitable for the speaker and did the poem have literary merit?
• Did the speaker demonstrate a background understanding of the poem’s main idea, lessons, moral or themes?
• Did the speaker establish the necessary mood, communicate ideas clearly and hold audience attention adequately?
• Did the speaker utilize appropriate voice qualities for the poem performed? and
• Did the speaker exhibit proper voice clarity, expression, speed, volume and body language to convey the meaning of the poem?
Following the speech presentations, the student participants will dine with their peers from three other high schools at a buffet luncheon of sloppy joes, fruit salad, dessert and beverages provided by the host school.
Tyrone speech coach Richard Merryman expressed his appreciation to Juniata Valley speech coach Sherry Crawford for her efforts at organizing this spring speech convocation.
Merryman said, “Since we at Tyrone High constitute the newest speech team in this central Pennsylvania speech league established in 1985, we especially want to commend speech coaches Sherry Crawford from Juniata Valley, Regina Hicks of Southern Huntingdon and Elizabeth McMullen of Williamsburg for their long-term efforts to advance the cause of speech in rural high schools.
“We also want to thank superintendent Bill Miller, principal Becky Erb and all our school board members, especially Mr. Brian Bressler, for providing funding and offering the encouragement to the Tyrone High School speech team.”
At the close of the buffet luncheon at Juniata Valley on Tuesday evening, first place winners at the winter speech convocation will perform for an audience of their peers. Quite predictably, as they witness these winners perform, most of the students who attend will begin to recognize the wisdom past celebrities have offered about speaking.
Said General Omar Bradley, “One good speech is worth an army.”
Writer Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “Speech has the power to persuade, to convert, to compel.”
Poet Robert Frost noted, “Half this world is composed of people who have something to say and cannot, while the other half consists of people who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
As they make their way home by mini-bus on Tuesday evening, whether they place first or not, the dozen members of Tyrone’s speech team will recognize that learning to speak well provides a person with the power to persuade others as well as a most precious tool to enhance the lives of speaker and listener for years to come.
