Final Speech - Public Speaking 1st Period

June 2014

Superlatives bother me.

When someone labels a thing or a person “better” or “best”, I often find myself asking what their point of reference is.  What is the scale?  What is the standard deviation?  In the end, I look for a way to disagree with the designation.  At the very least, I tell people, “It’s only the best so far.”  My pessimistic attitude reigns supreme.

But sometimes fate has a funny way of making hypocrites of folks like me.  So it is with a healthy dose of irony and humility that I dub this The Best Public Speaking class I have ever had.

I don’t wish to leave such a comment unproven so I offer the following examples in support of my argument:

1. If I asked Peter to come up here right now and perform an impromptu storytelling, everyone in this room would get pretty excited.
2. If I asked George and JD to reconstruct their semi-inappropriate performance of “The Graduate”, everyone in this room would sit up just a bit straighter in expectation.
3. If I asked Meredith the simple question: “how are you today?” we would doubtlessly get a 15-20 minute diatribe about her driving adventures in Lynchburg prior to school.
4. If I asked Sam McCorkle to come up here and run his prose one more time, complete with that awful Yoda voice - dude, it really is bad - you would all enjoy the nostalgia one final time.
5. If I asked Mckayla to come up here and deliver the most devastating dramatic interpretation she was capable of, we would easily be in puddles of inconsolable tears by the end.

I could go on; the list is long.  But maybe this reason is stronger than the rest for proving this is the best Public Speaking class I have ever taught: when I add my own thoughts, a quick comment, on something and I look out over the faces and intellects of this room, I see every face and every eye and every mind paying attention.  And I am humbled.

I didn’t always know this was what I wanted to do.  I had intimations early on, though, that being the center of attention was something special.  In third grade, I contracted the chicken pox and was homebound for three weeks.  I was bored out of my mind so I purchased and listened to the new hit release album, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and, without seeing his music video, I constructed a dance routine complete with backup dancers.  When I returned to school, I entered the yearly talent show, found some backup dancers, bought a white sequin glove ($2.99 at Sears) and won second place.  In eighth grade, I read a biography of Walt Disney for a class assignment and instead of giving an oral book report in class, I rearranged the desks in the room to create a Space Mountain-like roller coaster, complete with pop-up cue cards detailing important events in Mr. Disney’s life.  At the end of my senior year, two things happened in short order.  I won the VHSL State Forensics Championship in Extemporaneous Speaking and I was selected as one of three graduation speakers.  Each of those were amazing moments in my life and, in their own way, prepared me to do this today.  Teaching, for me, is half content-related (I have to know what I am talking about or why should anyone listen to me?) and half presentation (I have to say things in an interesting and worthwhile way or I’m just an automated delivery system).

I truly don’t know what kind of teacher I am.  I look out at your faces, at your eyes, and I find myself crushed between two thoughts.  One, my words might be the only interesting ones you hear today or all week; this moment might be the one that I can say something that years from now affects someone in this room to change their life for the better or decide in their own way to give back to a community and a people to which they feel indebted.  Second, my words the scant minutes on the clock are all keeping you from being able to go home or least leave here and if I could hurry both of those up, that would be great.  So I’ll settle for somewhere in the middle.

I do this thing, this teaching, which really is just trying to present the truth to teenagers, trying to help them not be so miserable, downtrodden, misbegotten, deflated human beings because I refuse to think of the future in those terms.  For every day you came to school and didn’t want to, for every subject that you took a test that you felt uncertain about, for every class that you finished in June and thought “it can’t really get harder”, I want you to realize: you’ve beaten them all.  You’re still standing.  You’re still breathing.  You’re the sum total of your successes not your failures.  And as you bask - rightfully so - in your individual and idiosyncratic power, know that somewhere behind you sits a teacher of public speaking that can’t help but be incurably and sensationally proud of you.

As a wise hobbit once said, “I am glad that you are with me - here - at the end of all things.”  I wish you the very best ending and bright, happy new beginning.