Youth Leadership: In grade 6 my class went through a program called “Youth Leadership”. It was all about building your confidance in public speaking. The lady who ran the program was known as “The Dragon Lady”. She was strict, but was nice and a very good teacher. About once every two weeks you would have to do a speech that you wrote yourself. The first one had to be about yourself, then the other two could be on any topic you liked! I did one on spiders, and one on teachers. They were both very funny. When I did my speech on teachers, I was nervous. But then, I saw a boy laughing in my class. This built up my confidance, and I started putting a lot of expresion into my voice. I was chosen to read one of my speeches at the Youth Leadership Graduation night, so I choose my spider speech which I thought would appeal to the parents. The night came, and I read my speech. People laughed, which was exactly what I liked. I read my last line “And keep away from the spiders website!” and sat back down again. Then, I was up again to read my line of “Sister Stephanie and the Gang” poem. Some people in the class were chosen to read parts of this poem. The poem was very funny! Because it’s one of my favourite poems, I’d like to share it with you all. Here it goes… Introducing “Sister Stephanie and the Gang!”
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Sister Stephanie and the Gang!
The supermarket proved to be
A trial for Sister Stephanie.
“Oh rats!” she grumbled to herself,
“The birdseed’s on the highest shelf
Unless I gain some extra height
My Charlie won’t get fed tonight.”
The manager who lingered near
Said, “Having trouble, sister dear?
Our shelves are much too high, you say?
Well I see it a different way.
“The problem is, you’re much too small!
A tiny speck, a ping-pong ball!
A monkey would be bigger than you
And rather better-looking too.”
Sister Stephanie left the store
But came back with a mighty roar
The windows smashed, alarm bells rang,
The nuns had formed a bikie gang.
The gang was fierce, the gang was mad
The gang was old and leather-clad
With chains and crosses, clubs and spikes
The nuns revved up their superbikes.
Then up and down the lanes they sped
With Sister Stephanie up ahead
“Yippee!” she cried, as piles of tins
Were scattered just like bowling pins.
They crushed the nuts, they blew away
The continental food display,
The squashed the squash, the split the peas,
They toppled all the toiletries.
The manager who’d been so rude
Was knocked into the frozen food
And there he lay is cold repose
With two fish-fingers up his nose.
The bikies rumbled home to tea
Except for Sister Stephanie
Who searched the smoking battleground
Until a pack of seed she found.
She paid the manager and smiled,
“I’m sorry that the girls ran wild
But really, you should not poke fun
At poor defenceless nuns, my son.”
Then off she roared upon her Harley
Home to feed her vulture, Charlie.
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If you thought that was funny, you would absolutely LOVE watching it being acted out, with expression and movements to go with each line. That was one of the things we did in Youth Leadership.
Then it was time for the awards. I was given best speech award by the teachers and the Dragon Lady (who isn’t really a dragon lady after all). This was a real achievement for me. I have the best speech award standing up in my room right now. Every time I see it I remember what a great time I had in Youth Leadership!
By the way, you probably want to read my speeches.
Speeches coming soon.
Another achievement of mine was getting commended in a National Story Writing competition (Junior Section) in 2005. My story was called ‘Chill Out Shopping’ which I really enjoyed writing. It was a great experiance being handed the certificate. And I have my whole story right here on my blog! “Lemme read it!” You say.
To read my Chill Out Shopping story, go to “My story (Chill Out Shopping)” on this blog. It’s as simple as that!