Calgary high school students qualify to compete against the world in speech and debate

Standing in front of a crowd to speak publicly is terrifying to some but two Strathcona Tweedsmuir School students have overcome that fear and channeled it into success.

In April they'll be competing in the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships. The school south of Calgary has about 100 grade seven to 12 students participating in the program and Alia Nanji and Bolu Kasumu have risen to the top.

"Bolu was fourth at the national tournament so that qualified him to compete," said the school's director of speech and debate Lennard Fink. "Then the other qualifying tournament for the worlds is the Independent Schools Public Speaking Championships and at that tournament Alia qualified."

Kasumu is in grade 11 now but three years ago he wasn't keen to join the team because he hated public speaking.

"But my dad really wanted me to join speech because he knew it was a skill that I really needed to work on," said Kasumu. "So against my will he said you really need to do this so I did it and yeah it really changed the way I look at it because now speaking in front of groups of people or debating aren't things that are scary to me at all, so it's really changed from something that used to terrify me to something that I'm really comfortable with."

Kasumu says he now channels that nervous excitement and fear into something useful when he gets up to speak in front of the judges.

"One thing I always do before I speak is I take a couple of deep breaths, I close my eyes and I imagined myself doing the speech flawlessly," he said. "I visualized myself debating with excellent points making my points clearly to the judges and then I get up there and I do what I visualized."

Nanji is in grade 12 and likes to connect with an audience when she's speaking to gauge how she's doing but says that's difficult now because competitions are done via Zoom rather than in-person. But she's learning to cope without that instant feedback from a live audience.

"I know right after I finished if it was a good round or a bad round or if there's something I could have done better," she said. "Typically at a speech competition there's more than one round and that's always helpful to hear from (the judges) what they thought you could do better and it always helps you as you go on to your next round to just improve as you go."

Fink has taught many students who've gone onto successful careers after their time on the speech and debate team.

"Universities look very favorably on students who have a background of speech and debate because they bring a wealth of knowledge to the university," he said. "And that's the kind of student they want, ones who can express their ideas freely and effectively."

The two are hopeful they'll do well on the world stage and do their school proud. Soon it will be time for Nanji to prepare for university and a career after six years in speech and debate.

"I've already found that it helps me in interviews," she said. "Just like interviewing for a volunteering opportunity, I felt so at ease while in front of someone that made it a lot easier to get across my point and sell myself for that job so I found it's helped me there but I know it's absolutely going to help me as I keep going forward, just the little situations when I'm talking to someone I don't know, just my speaking skills come out and I just feel at ease."

Learn more about the 34th world championships here: www.cds.on.ca