Reflection from a first year speech coach:

This past year I was the head speech coach at the school that I teach at.  This was the first time that I have ever been a coach, and I will not lie when I say that it has probably been one of the most stressful experiences of my life.  While I love speech, I learned that being a coach, especially at a small school where students are involved in many other things, creates many challenges.  However, even though I would chop this up as a very stressful experience, there were so many things that brought me a great deal of joy, even if I didn’t quite realize that at the time. I learned, once again, that even though this was a stressful experience, God can teach you some amazing life lessons.  

The first positive is that I have been given the chance to learn how to be a coach.  I have had many leadership roles throughout my life.  However, one thing I have never had the chance to be was a coach.  I absolutely loved speech when I was in high school and now I had the opportunity to coach students in something that I really love.  I was able to take a script and put together a Reader’s Theatre role which is traditionally where people read on stools or chairs and then use their voices, expressions, and some very small movement to tell the story on the scripts.  You need to use scripts because it should not be memorized.  This isn’t a play, but it should have moments of being a play and or being like a choral reading.  I love Reader’s Theatre, and it was fun to have my speech students reading it out and thinking of ideas that they should add when they are reading the script.  

The second positive is that I really learned how to problem solve in a very quick manner.  There were many, many things that popped up during this speech season that was not ideal, to say the least.  First, of course, was finding time to practice.  There were many students who were also a part of basketball and a few that were involved in cheerleading or had a job.  Therefore, I had to find a time where a majority of students could make it a few days a week.  Then there was the problem of having students coming to practices.  Because I chose some practices at 7:30 a.m., there were many students who just did not get up on time for practices.  There were a few other problems such as people deciding they needed to quit or were gone for a long time in quarantine that I actually had to change a part to only being a one person role as opposed to a two person role before performances.  There was someone who found out they had to be gone for the first contest, so I had to find someone to fill in at the last minute (being the day before).  Basically, this was not a smooth ride, but I learned how to take a problem and fix it quickly.  Often in the past when problems arose that I didn’t know how to fix, I would have a break down moment and not touch the problem till later and therefore waiting on the problem solving process.  I didn’t have that option here, so I am hoping that will teach me to handle problems at a quicker pace in the future.  

The third positive is that I was able to spend some time with students.  The reason that I became a teacher was so that way I could grow relationships with students and hopefully make them feel accepted and loved to then help them grow to be the best person that they can possibly be.  There were many times whether it be at practice, on the suburban ride on the way up to the competition, or lastly at the competition itself, when I was able to have some great conversations with students.  Some were asking for advice and telling me about the big things in life, but many others were just little conversations like prom dates, hair, makeup, basketball, volleyball, stories from childhood, etc.  There were also sometimes when we were able to just laugh.  There are not enough times in the school day to just spend in laughter with my students, and I am happy that I had some of those moments during this speech season. 

To go along with the third positive, I got the chance to work with students who may not have usually done something like speech before.  There were a few students who chose to be a part of speech this year who had never done anything like speech before.  They were not usually a person who was a part of plays or would always be the person who is known for standing out and talking in class.  However, I got the chance to watch them grow to be a person to speak in front of others.  Being able to speak in front of others and communicate well is definitely a life skill that many students should be taught, and I am so proud of the students who were willing to try and learn that life skill.  

In conclusion, while I will still say that this is one of the most stressful situations I have ever had, I am learning to look at these hard situations or hard moments and still finding the joy in it.  It turns out while I was looking at being a speech coach as being an incredibly challenging and anxiety filled experience, there were many joyous moments that were happening the entire time.  I am now set to do individual speech, and I am going to try to remember that even though that also may be stressful, I will continue to look for the joyous and wonderful moments.