What's happening to local speech classes?

How about those Lodi High speech students? Twenty-one of them qualified for the state and national tournaments.

We so often honor athletes, but this is an academic honor worthy of the front page. And speech is a program that will benefit students long after the athletic fetes of youth become a mere memory.

Our hats are off to advisor Jennifer Tillett, who juggled both the speech team and the AVID college prep program this year. She's being forced to choose between the two programs next year. We hope the Lodi High speech class survives.

Contrast the success story at Lodi High to the fact the only a few Tokay students qualified for these prestigious tournaments.

Speech at Tokay is not a class this year — it's a club. The Tokay kids who managed to find time for speech club are getting a great experience, too. Hats off, also, to advisor John Chapman for his after-hours effort.

But here's a bigger point:

The compromises forced on speech are being forced on shop classes, music, art, freshman athletics and on and on ... all in the name of giving more resources over to No Child Left Behind and other college preparation classes ... all at a time when record numbers of kids are being rejected at University of California and California State University campuses.

It's ironic that this problem can't be solved by Lodi school administrators or trustees. These compromises are forced on them by Sacramento and Washington politicians. We don't hear many of them talking about No Child Left Behind and the attack on enrichment programs in high school.

Given how many speeches a legislator, congressman or president has to give, don't you think they would know speech classes are fading away?

Lodi News-Sentinel

Reader Feedback

John Chapman wrote on Apr 25, 2008 7:10 AM:

" Speech & debate classes give our college-bound students the opportunity to master important communication skills through competition. Elective classes are taking huge hits as the yearly emphasis of increasing test scores required by NCLB drives the curriculum. Forensics provides the opportunity for our top students to be successful in the competitive environment of college. Any high school without speech & debate as well as beginning public speaking classes is simply shortchanging its students of a critical academic, business and life skill. "

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John Chapman wrote on Apr 25, 2008 6:49 AM:

" Like Whoa Nellie!, I also took my first speech class with Wayne Craig at LHS and continued with beginning & advanced public speaking with Ginger at Delta. I started the beginning public speaking classes at Tokay because I knew that our students need solid communication skills to be successful regardless of what career they choose. Unfortunately, 8 years of program building went down the tubes last year when I was informed that there wasn't enough staffing to continue to offer the classes. "

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marie wrote on Apr 24, 2008 9:57 AM:

" I am also a big supporter of speech and debate classes. It saddens me to think our high school students may lose the opportunity to experience all the different elective classes that we had as kids. Nothing wrong with exploring in academics. Life is not all about test scores, math, science and English. We need well rounded individuals,too. Maybe its time to look at the long term outcomes of "No Child Left Behind." "

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dogbark wrote on Apr 23, 2008 5:14 PM:

" schools are starting to look like mushrooms, the stem is the teaching staff, the big bloated head is the ever growing admin staff.
Each and every year there are more and mnore students arriving at their senior year finding out they won't graduate, or they don't have the courses to get them into college, yet they have been "tracked" by the counselors for three prior years.
As for athletics; name ten athletes from our local schools who went on to really big careers? Now name ten you know left with arthritic injuries and a life of pain. sad and sick. "

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leo wrote on Apr 21, 2008 5:56 PM:

" Jen Tillett pours her heart and soul into her students. Her students are so lucky to have her! "

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commonsense wrote on Apr 21, 2008 5:37 AM:

" good article. Written to understand the speech class is disappearing for the intervention class, just as they take away the elective classes. NCLB is hurting our top students. The board of education and the too many top administrators in LUSD need to take a stand, no federal dollars, no following your program that is robbing the top students of our schools. "

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JD wrote on Apr 20, 2008 5:06 PM:

" Is Beyer still dominating the local speech and debate scene? "

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Whoa Nellie! wrote on Apr 19, 2008 3:38 PM:

" I agree that the Speech classes are needed for students going on to college. I took speech at LHS my senior year (many years ago) and then at SJDC. The classes were very good, and that was due to the excellent teachers, Monty Montgomery & Ginger DeBerry. I am happy to read that LHS still has a dedicated speech advisor in Jennifer Tillett. It is NO coincidence that kids who participate in Speech are usually at the top of their class. "

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