Cameron Penney
While it wasn’t an Oscar, Julia McManaman’s passion for having “the perfect movie night,” did land her some hardware.
The Grade 8 student at Robert Moore School took home the top prize among the 10 students competing in the Rainy River District School Board’s annual speech contest last Wednesday.
“I was nervous,” McManaman admitted after receiving her award.
“But I have a lot of experience presenting in front of large groups like this from dance, recitals, and Festival,” she noted.
“I’m used to this kind of thing but yeah, [it’s] nerve-wracking.”
Ben Olson, a Grade 8 student at Sturgeon Creek School, captured second place with his speech on “Procrastination.”
Marcus Morrisseau, a Grade 8 student at Donald Young School in Emo, took third place with “Skinwalker.”
When the students began preparing their speeches, teachers offered advice that helped McManaman choose her topic.
“[The teachers] said pick a topic you are passionate about and you have knowledge on,” she recalled.
“There’s serious topics that I could have done but I wouldn’t really be able to relate to them all, or some of them have already been done,” McManaman explained.
“So I was like, ‘Hey, I love movies and I want to share my interest.’
“Hopefully other people can experience movies the way I do now after I gave them this knowledge,” she enthused.
McManaman spent plenty of time preparing her speech, which involved much more than just watching movies.
“I spent three weeks writing my speech,” she noted.
“At first it was really long so I had to cut it down.
“I practised for a long period of time over those three weeks and I kept rehearsing until I had it memorized,” she added.
Olson, meanwhile, took a humorous approach with his speech—saying he was inspired by his own procrastination.
“I was the last one in my class to pick a speech topic,” he recalled.
“I was actually getting worried because it was a week before [presentations] and I had just started writing it,” he remarked.
Olson’s speech highlighted the best things to do when procrastinating on something, such as stretching your legs and getting a breath of fresh air.
“All of these are things that I do,” he laughed.
“I made a list of all the things I kind of do to procrastinate, and I narrowed it down to the best ones and used those ones in my speech.”
Olson spoke within his school as part of the speech contest last year and felt that helped him moving forward to the district level this year.
“I think that helped me prepare for this year even more,” he reasoned.
“I knew what I had to do to improve this year.”
While McManaman and Olson both chose light-hearted topics, Morrisseau settled on a paranormal one.
He spoke about shape-shifting creatures known as “skinwalkers,” which are part of Navajo culture.
“I was learning about ‘skinwalkers’ because last year I did a speech on cryptids, which is about the unknown and monsters of the mind,” he explained.
“I’m aboriginal, and this is an aboriginal monster, so I thought it would be cool to do a speech about it,” he added.
“Next thing I know, I came in third place.”
Morrisseau had plenty to share on a topic few were familiar with.
In fact, he knew the information so well, he was able to shares his knowledge without any cue cards.
“The fact that they are shape-shifters is the most interesting thing I could come up with,” Morrisseau said.
“And what they do, how their bones break and how their skin grows, it’s really gross.
“[The research] was more browsing on the Internet about monsters, which was not really work,” he added.
“It was more fun than it was work to me.”
