Shayla Grantham
Dunlap Valley Middle School Dunlap sgrantham@dunlapcusd.net Stacey Worrell Our Saviour School Jacksonville worrells@oss-shamrocks.com Trish Ballard
ballardt@ghills69.com
Diana Sherman
marcuma@judah.org Robert Blackburn Riverview Grade School East Peoria rblackburn@rgschool.com Kim Des Lauriers Immaculate Conception School Morris kdeslaur@ics1.org
(music under, then. . . )
TRISH: So once upon a time. . .
DIANA: I love fairy tales.. .
TRISH: So once upon a time. .
DIANA: They’re so. . .I don’t know. . . so fairy-like.
TRISH: So once upon a time, there was a girl.
SHAYLA: That’s me.
TRISH: A girl who went through IESA speech, then to high school, then to college, got her teacher’s certificate, and her one great dream was. .
SHAYLA: I want to be a speech coach!
ROB: Mental illness is a terrible thing.
SHAYLA: But I really, really, really want to be a speech coach!
STACEY: So she went to her advisor in college.
SHAYLA: I want to be an IESA speech coach!
DIANA: What? Are you crazy?
SHAYLA: I want to change lives. . I want to mold the future… I want to make a difference!
DIANA: You ever consider selling Mary Kay?
TRISH: But she wouldn’t give up!
SHAYLA: I won’t give up!
ROB: She wouldn’t give in!
SHAYLA: I won’t give in! I want to be a speech coach!
TRISH: So she applied for her first teaching job.
DIANA: Okay, it says here you want to teach English. .
SHAYLA: Oh yes!
DIANA: And you made great grades in college.
SHAYLA: Oh yes!
DIANA: And you want to coach speech.
SHAYLA: Oh yes! Yes! Yes!
DIANA: Cool. (a beat, then) What’s speech?
SHAYLA: It’s an IESA activity! One of the best!
DIANA: IESA? Oh, it must be a sport. See the athletic director.
TRISH: So the scared first year teacher knocked on the door of the athletic director. He had his own office, secretary, Starbucks outlet, and personal masseuse.
ROB: Yeah? Whatta you want?
SHAYLA: I’m the new speech coach!
ROB: What the he--- uh…what’s that?
SHAYLA: I prepare our students to go out into the world with self-confidence, poise, polish and a new understanding of their role in society!
ROB: (a long beat, then) Does that have anything to do with football?
TRISH: The poor girl was all alone.
SHAYLA: I’m all alone.
TRISH: She found an old cardboard box in the back of the janitor’s closet. It was full of mold and mildew and. . .and scripts!
SHAYLA: Wow! First Bus Ride! I’ve never heard of that! It must be a new one! Sister, You’re Crazy! The Gettysburg Address! And the original copy of The Ten Commandments! All these brand new scripts!
TRISH: She hadn’t heard of the Consortium Publishing Company.
(a long beat as the rest of the cast turns and stares accusingly at Ken)
KEN: Hey. . my publisher’s standing right back there. He made me write that.
TRISH: So the new speech coach began organizing her team!
STACEY: I wanna do it!
ROB: I wanna do it!
DIANA: Me! Me! Me!
SHAYLA: Great!
TRISH:. . .she said.
SHAYLA: Now who’s going to sign up to practice?
ROB: (a long silence, then) I’ve got volleyball.
DIANA: Band practice.
STACEY: Soccer.
ROB: My parents live in Cleveland and I have to commute every night.
DIANA: My dog had puppies and my brother busted his hernia.
ROB: Mom says I can’t stay after school because somebody has to come home an untie Grandma. . . and we had Grandpa neutered.
TRISH: This was going to be a long season. . .So that night the new speech coach went to bed and she had a dream. (music under) And in her dream someone came floating through her window.
STACEY: (singing) Let it go! Let it go! Can’t hold it back anymore! Let it go! Turn away and slam the door!
SHAYLA: What? Who are you? Elsa? Elsa, is that you?
STACEY: No, I’m Helga. Elsa’s my second cousin. She’s expensive and the IESA pays like nothing for presenters at this conference. I’m your IESA fairy godmother.
SHAYLA: But you don’t look like. . .
STACEY: A fairy godmother? Look kid, I’ve been coachin’ speech for over forty years. It takes its toll. You wanna make somethin’ of it?
SHAYLA: No! No! Oh Helga, please help me! I’m lost and alone in the wicked world of IESA speech! I don’t even know what to do! Where’s my budget?
STACEY: You don’t have one.
SHAYLA: Where’s my schedule?
STACEY: You don’t have one.
SHAYLA: I’m losing my mind!
STACEY: You don’t have one. You’re a speech coach.
SHAYLA: And so, through the magic of theatre, her IESA fair godmother whisked her away! (music under) Where are we going?
STACEY: The Magic Kingdom!
SHAYLA: In Orlando?
STACEY: Close. Bloomington.
TRISH: And before she could say, No Child Left Behind, she was in the Magic Kingdom!
SHAYLA: Wow! This is so cool! Look, Helga! All those children running our way! Who are they?
STACEY: They’re you’re speech team!
SHAYLA: But where are their scripts?
STACEY: They have them all memorized!
SHAYLA: And look! That huge beautiful room with carpet, a great sound system, and comfortable seats!
STACEY: That’s your practice room, doll. Ain’t it somethin’?
SHAYLA: And. . .oh my! Who are those people?
STACEY: Those are the soccer coaches, youth ministers, and parents. . . all lined up to give you your students any time you want them. And see that new BMW?
SHAYLA: Yeah! It’s made of gold!
STACEY: It’s yours. You bought it with your stipend for coaching speech.
SHAYLA: Wowsers!
STACEY: Hold it! Hold it!
SHAYLA: What’re you doing?
STACEY: I can’t do this. Look out there. We’ve got a whole bunch of new IESA speech coaches this season. Just look. . .(pointing to a new coach) . . look at her face. She’s actually believing this. (to the lady in the audience) Sweetheart, this is fantasy land. And that’s not where you’ll be going this speech season.
ROB: You know you just ruined this skit.
STACEY: Tough. I’ve been around, doll. I can do what I want. Besides, I teach in a parochial school. We make our own rules.
ROB: Nicole is giving us that blank stare.
STACEY: She’s not mad. She always takes Valium right before this conference. Look, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s forget about the fairy stuff. Let’s get real.
DIANA: Huh?
STACEY: We did a little snooping. We sent out a few emails before the conference. . . to some of you and to some of your former students. Here’s what we got back.
(music under)
TRISH: I’m in my third decade of teaching and I’ve been our school’s speech coach from day one. In fact, they had no speech team until I got there. The thing that amazes me is that it’s the real knuckleheads who’ll Facebook me ten years later. . . the kids who barely made it to contest. . . to thank me for what speech did for them.
ROB: I was in the U.S. Army serving in South Korea. They wanted volunteers for soldiers who’d take command of our unit. We had to give a speech to prove we could do it. Everybody just sat there, afraid to speak. I thought. . .Hell yes, I can do this! I was in speech contest! I retired last year with the rank of captain.
DIANA: My speech coach made me do a duet with this kid. I was mad because I didn’t want to do a duet with a boy. I guess it worked. We have two kids of our own now.
STACEY: Our speech contest was in Springfield and I was a nervous wreck as a seventh-grader. I’d worked hard but my nerves were shot. I don’t even remember giving the speech, but when I got done the judge called me back to her desk and told me that I’d made her cry. She thanked me for giving her a gift that day. It’s been a long, long time ago but when I’m feeling sad I remember that. I touched somebody.
SHAYLA: When you’re working with kids they have no idea how much of your own heart you put into this. Sometimes. . . not often. . but sometimes they thank you. And when they don’t you can at least see what it does for them.
TRISH: There’s a college near where I teach. When the registrar finds out the kids come from our speech program they’re automatically bumped up to a higher-level speech course. Some of my formers students have been known to lie about where they come from.
ROB: Our social studies teacher once told me that the kids in her class would always get mad when they were giving oral reports and they had to follow one of my speech students.
DIANA: I got a third in my first year of contest then I didn’t have the grades to go out the next year, but today I look back upon going to contest as one of the biggest events of my life. My coach said he was proud of me. Nobody had ever said that before.
TRISH: I was never an especially religious person until I saw the miracles that happened in the week before contest.
STACEY: Three of my former students are now coaching speech. I’m pretty proud of that.
SHAYLA: I went to college and took my first speech class. It was a required freshman class and they were petrified. I’d been in IESA literary contest and I blew them out of the water. I’m not kidding. I blew them out of the water!
ROB: I’m now with Second City in Chicago. I started out in speech in Jerseyville.
DIANA: I started out doing a duet in Jr High speech contest, then high school speech, then college and law school. When I sit at my judge’s bench in Mt. Sterling, Illinois, I know where it all started.
TRISH: Often times. . . .not always, but a lot of the time. . . my biggest victories aren’t the first place medals. They’re the shy little kid who makes it to contest and comes home with a red ribbon.
STACEY: I can’t even talk about this without tearing up a little. It was like. . . maybe fifteen years ago. This kid went out for speech. I had to pay his entry fee because his family had absolutely nothing. His whole family showed up on contest day. . I mean Grandpa and Grandma and everybody. They didn’t have dress clothes but they did the best they could and the whole family sat there silently mouthing the boy’s lines as he said his speech. I thought, Oh God, please let him do well. He was the only one in their family who’d ever gone out for an extra-curricular activity. When they put up his first place win in the school cafeteria it was like Christmas. Everybody was shouting and crying. I’ll never forget that.
TRISH: And so the girl became a speech coach. . .
ROB: And so hundreds of lives were made a little bit better. . .
DIANA: And she needed no fairy godmother. . .
SHAYLA: And she needed no huge budget or BMW. . .
ROB: But she gave her heart instead.
TRISH: And so we’re here today. . .
ROB: Welcome to IESA speech. (music and out)