March 26, 2009

Leland speech and debate students have fun working with others

By Carol Rosen
Editor

Remember in high school when you had to memorize a speech or a soliloquy and then present it to the students in your class? Remember how nervous it made you? The confidence necessary to do that speech typically wasn’t there and you may have stuttered, sweated, laughed or forgot what you wanted to say because of your nerves.
A group of Leland’s speech and debate students are working with area elementary, middle and high schools to make those fears a thing of the past.

The After School All Stars work on their speech and debate skills. Photos courtesy of Leland speech and debate

Leland’s outreach program started four years ago when speech and debate teacher Gay Brasher put together a project that sent her to middle schools. Now, her speech and debate students are doing outreach programs for younger students to teach them gestures, walking and body language as well as other activities to prepare them for speech and debate tournaments in high school.

The program is a total success. Last year Burnett Middle School, the first school that Brasher worked with, hosted a middle school speech tournament that was comprised of 92 students from 17 schools in the area. That success led to this year’s tournament, which is set for May 16 and is expected to bring in more students from schools as far away as Stockton and Los Angeles.

“I’ve been doing this for 42 years, and I know that change and challenge make everything fresh,” Brasher said in a January 2009 article in the magazine “Rostrum.” “About four years ago, the new principal [at Burnett Middle School] kept saying ‘Gay, I need your students to come work with my students. I want speech for these kids.’ We came up with the idea where I would go into seven classes for 25 minutes each and do these little fun activities.”

Once Brasher tried it and found that the “Kids see me on campus and cheer when I come in and beg me not to go when I leave,” she decided to include her high school students in the process. Now, not only do the middle school students love the program, the high school students overwhelmingly volunteer to spend time teaching.

And, the program has grown. It’s not just for middle school anymore. Students are working with elementary schools that feed into Burnett, as well as with students at Hoover, Bret Harte and Castillero Middle Schools and even some high schools.

Senior Taman Narayan says he is creating speech tournaments at San Jose High School, for example. In addition, he and others are working with students who are learning English as a second language. Once they have worked with them, they set up impromptu debates against their pupils.

“I’ve been working with speech and debate at middle schools,” said Aparna Ramanan. “We put together modified versions like pre-debate that caters to middle schools and work on topics such as core studies versus the arts or if gender segregated classes for science and math produce better, more learned students.”

Both students noted that the overall goal is to raise the students’ confidence level and reduce fears about speaking in front of others. Despite busy schedules that often include a host of other activities, classes and preparing and learning their own speeches and debate topics, the students find time to help out. “There’s always time, I still have time to waste,” said Narayan.

It’s not an easy program either. Leland speech and debaters have an extensive schedule of programs and tournaments to start with. The outreach program adds to their work. One school has an after school program on Mondays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30, the outreach students go to San Jose High. Brasher picks up middle schoolers on another day and takes them to San Jose High “so they can get an idea about speech in high school. Brasher and her students work with two fifth grade classes as well as a fifth grade ESL class.

In addition, the students work with the After School Allstars program providing enrichment doing weekend workshops. And, some of those middle school kids spend time working at Leland with the high school students.

The Leland students prepare the materials for working with the students. Brasher gives them ideas, but it’s up to the outreach students to develop and present the materials.

Anushee Sondhi is a seventh grade student at Bret Harte who watched her sister and was amazed. “I come here every Thursday afternoon,” she told the Times. She likes it so much she competed at the tournament at Burnett last May and went on to Santa Clara University to compete against five other “novice” students. She came in second.

“After learning [what to do], I enjoy talking in front of an audience. It lets me open up more. I’m not shy, I’ve performed in Indian dramas and mythological plays and classical Indian dance. I definitely want to continue. My favorite is dramatic interpretation but I basically like everything, it’s all fun,” Anushee said.

When the Times visited, Roank Shah and Zade Shakir were busy working on selections they were to present to an audience at Hoover Middle School later in the week. The two were planning to do humorous interpretations. “It’s a wonderful experience. They are great audiences,” said Roank. “They enjoy it and so do I. I love it because I get more laughs from them. To them everything is new and they are very attentive and want to participate,” he said.

“We have this thriving program,” Brasher concluded. “We can and should bring in as many schools and students as we can.”