Stand Up and Speak

Stories

• Thank You and God Bless You!
  Our son was due to present the topic "The Interior Plains of Canada" to his class and teachers at school. He had himself created the presentation and had done a few rehearsals at home presenting to his mom and dad.
  
  What I am writing below are the exact words his teacher told us, when we went for the Parent Teacher conference that same evening.
  
  "Subhan was the last speaker to go and the entire class was pretty much distracted and restless when he started. But the moment he said My Dear Friends, there was pin drop silence in the class. He had gotten everyone's attention with the tone and delivery of just those three words. Then he went on to present the 6 slides that he had created and there was not even a whisper in the class while he spoke. And at the end the applause was thunderous. The entire class congratulated him and there were some grade 5 students in the audience who congratulated him saying that he was very "professional".
  His teacher told us, had she known he was so good, she would have asked him to go first, to set a high benchmark for the rest of the students.
  
  After the applause died down, Subhan shared with his class that he had been training as a competitive public speaker for a year. His class teacher apparently asked him if he could share a speech that he had delivered or had prepared, with the class. Subhan presented his speech that he had prepared for the Osmow's contest. His teacher, said that when he ended the speech, the entire class stood up and clapped for a very long time. Some of his friends apparently told him that if he continued to speak that way he would soon need to buy ear plugs because the audience wouldn't stop applauding :-)
  
  I know Subhan has been doing well in the contests, but as his parents, we felt that he had truly been victorious that day, since his speech had touched so many children who had probably not even known that Public Speaking was something that can and should be learnt.
  
  This association with Stand Up and Speak has changed not only our son’s life in the past one year, but as his parents we have also learnt and benefited immensely as we participated in the speech creation, practices and presentation videos.
  We feel that one reason why Stand Up and Speak is so successful is because you never run the school as a business. You do it as something that inspires you, something that you all believe will make a positive difference to society. And we witnessed that benefit first hand with our son.
  
  We wish you and your team the best in all your future endeavors and hope the entire SUAS team continues to help us learn to Speak Up.