The Content of Character

It was the first time in five years that I had seen her. I wanted to say, "I missed you so much, mom"; "I am so happy to see you again," but the sentences wouldn't come out of my mouth. They felt trapped, like a ball of cotton sticking in my teeth, making it hard to breathe.

Hey Nick, long time no e-.

That little snippet above is our entry from this year's free-speech contest. It's the introduction to the emotional crisis that we would spend the next four minutes trying to resolve. But, from that, if it's not obvious: we did not win, because, duh.

If you think about it too much

¹And I think maybe I do.

¹, writing the speech is probably the easiest part of preparing the students for a speech contest. Well, the actual writing, itself, is of course an unceasing labor, first in trying to understand the content, then in trying to understand the speaker because, ultimately, speech writing is about helping the student say what they want to say in the ways they want to say it if only their grasp of the English language were better. But once the speech has been sent to print, since the text supposedly speaks of their heart, it should be no extra work to get them to invest in performing the content.

In lots of ways, helping students pick materials for the Recitation and Reading divisions is much more challenging for me. And even once the material has been picked, I can't help but stress over whether or not the material is at the appropriate level for the speaker and for the contest.

That is why even before I begin, we get together to lay out a Map of Success for the students. The Critical Theorist in me requires that we clearly articulate objectives for the speech contest and define what we are going to consider a 'success' and what is a 'failure.'

For some of our students, merely participating is the target, so then 'participating well' is our goal. For other students, we have much more specific challenges, such as oral mechanics or level of difficulty of vocabulary or grammatical patterns that we would like for them to develop.

And while 'winning' is a definitely a consideration, I do not like making it a significant marker of success because there are so many variables to placing that are so far beyond our control. After all, though winning is 'the point' of the competition, what if we perform admirably but the level of competition happens to be unusually high that day? Was that a waste of time? Or, conversely, if we perform abysmally, but the level of competition is low and we win, do we consider our preparation and execution a 'success,' or anything more than just being really lucky? Or what if the judges are 'bad' and judge according to criteria that is beyond the scope of the rubric of the contest

²*[Cough, cough]*

²?

It becomes paramount to not only recognize that in judged competitions, sometimes it is not always what we do right or wrong, but about what the other contestants do and what the judges see or do not see.

All we can do is make sure that we produce a speech--in content and delivery--that is comprehensible and compelling.

So, with an eye towards our mutually negotiated terms of 'success,' in picking the material for our recitation and reading, there are a few key factors that I want to consider: in order for the student to want to spend hours and hours working on the minutia of mechanics, the text needs to be emotionally engaging and offer points of personal investment; likewise, in order for the time spent to be a worthwhile learning experience, the text should be sufficiently challenging.

Similarly, since I will have to listen to the student recite the speech for weeks on end, it has to be a text that I find worth listening to.

And yet, and yet, sometimes I don't know if the challenge is worth the risk. Maybe the text is too hard to memorize, let alone understand. Maybe the text does not accurately showcase the students' talents or strengths. Or maybe the text does not line up with what the judges expect or come prepared to hear.

One of our students is a girl from Peru: smart, charming, and a very competent English speaker. We did not particularly have any students in mind when trying to select who to ask to do the district speech contest, and so it was by great fortune that Naomi stepped up to the challenge. It was as if she fell into my nets, a giftwrapped treasure from the gods set afloat down the stream. And so when she drifted along she seemed to be the perfect pair to a text that had also, out-of-the-blue, jumped into my ship three months earlier.

Now, I'm perpetually on the lookout for new material, but it seemed to be a particularly divine turn of the Wheel that I stumbled upon a not-too distant episode of Radiolab that happened to feature a story from Cosmicomics.

"The Distance of the Moon" is a 1965, translated text written by Italian neo-mythologizer, Italo Calvino. It is a beautifully written tale based on the premise that at one time the earth and moon were much closer to each other than they are now: so close, in fact, that all you had to do was prop up a tall ladder and you could find yourself on the cool, cream-colored surface of the moon.

The text, written in an oral, folk-tale style, is challenging in its conversational tone, in addition to its advanced vocabulary.

On those nights the water was very calm, so silvery it looked like mercury, and the fish in it, violet-colored, unable to resist the Moon's attraction, rose to the surface, all of them, and so did the octopuses and the saffron medusas.

Despite being quite conversant in English, the text was hard for her to read aloud and its meaning obfuscated by the extremely casual structure. But that very tone and rhythm helped to create space for some strikingly beautiful prose:

...or else we contemplated the stars beyond the Moon, big as pieces of fruit, made of light, ripened on the curved branches of the sky, and everything exceeded my most luminous hopes, and yet, and yet, it was, instead, exile.

It is difficult to read. It is a bit lilting and heavy of heart. But its hopeful richness and wonder is a tone that matches Naomi to a tee.

It was a risk because I was not sure if Naomi would be able to master the text. But, most of all, it was a risk because I was not sure that the judges would understand the context of the presentation as a break from the stilted political stump form. Would they be open to a dynamic, oral interpretation inspired reading?

And, unfortunately

³As the Wheel is wont to turn

³, I am thinking that they did not.

It was, by far, the most technically complex text in the entire speech contest. It was also the most interesting, with its emotional depth and literary beauty. But it is hard to say if I set Naomi up for success with the piece that we picked.

However, I do know that I would have been disappointed with myself if I let us pick a 一年生英語 Reader level text

⁴Anyone interested in a fourth or fifth rendition of "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish," or "I Have a Dream"? No? Okay, how about "The History of Ice Cream," or an excerpt from the Disney Storybook Collection?

⁴ like everyone else.

Anyway, it appears that any text that asks the judges to listen to the content to understand changes in tone or emotion, let alone challenges them to listen to a student speak at near-native pace, is a little too much to ask for. I guess I will just have to dust off my old copies of Big Dipper or Mainstream if I want my kids to get past the district round.