Moscow High School meets oratorical excellence

In the first year of its existence, Moscow High School’s advanced speech program tied for first in districts and sent three people to the state semifinals — two of whom placed in the top 10 for their events.

MHS teacher Melissa Kirkland said the school board approved the class last year, which requires students to participate in competitive speaking events, and the program is already a hit.

She said there are a wealth of benefits imparted to students in the program beyond developing and perfecting their public speaking skills. Some even earn college credit for taking the course, which may allow them to skip remedial communications courses when they begin college.

“Obviously, the goal is to hone their public speaking skills, but a lot of them also engage in critical thinking and analysis,” Kirkland said. “(It’s) teaching them to be problem solvers and good analyzers and a lot of them also deal with current issues … for fun, kids are solving real world problems and being engaged in what’s going on in society.”

Kirkland said the program attracts a wide spectrum of students — the introspective and extroverted alike can come together and glean crucial benefits from the course and competitions. She said the range of events compliments this diversity; while some students thrive in off-the-cuff, impromptu debate, others have a talent for composing and delivering powerful and impassioned rhetoric that draws an emotional response from the judges, the audience and even the speaker.

MHS Senior Adrian Sedgwick, who’s speech on the diversity of experiences within the transgender and LGBTQ community won him sixth in state for his event, said he chose to compete in a prepared speaking event specifically because it best suited his oratorical style and talents. He said this allows him to be more confident in his grasp of the subject and more practiced in delivery, but prepared competitive speech is not without its own unique challenges.

For one thing, he said, the speeches and speakers tend to be incredibly polished.

“Your topic has to be interesting and your delivery has to be interesting,” Sedgwick said. “With a lot of prepared events, to really shine, you have a good topic and you can’t just stand there and read the speech, you have to make it interesting.”

In contrast, junior Jules Carr-Chellman said his participation in an unrehearsed panel competition further underscored just how essential debate is to forming sound ideology.

He said in his most recent debate, which won him fourth place in state, he argued against a position he agrees with — and won.

“No ideas really hold water until they’ve been criticized; that’s the way I feel,” Carr-Chellman said. “Whether or not it’s right or it’s wrong, everything needs to be vetted, everything needs to see the opposition before it can become a solid idea.”

Scott Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to sjackson@dnews.com.