<p>Make sure the speech is in your own voice. The english teacher at our high school who is assigned to help the kids work on their speech ends up making them all sound alike, using vocabulary that they'd never choose themselves. Even the personal, funny anecdotes come out stiff and stilted. Let your own voice come through.</p>
<p>And keep it short. 3 minutes max. Set a timer and practice.</p>
<p>Last year's graduating class had 12 students with perfect 4.0's. Usually each val. gets to give a very short speech. These kids decided to write a giant poem about their high school years -- in the format of Dr. Suess. It was great!</p>
<p>Well, after having sat through one very painful speech last year, I would say this: boring, forgettable, but decently well-written? That's fine, as long as the speech isn't really long. Don't force it if you're not on track to be the next great comedian or a presidential speech writer. But, I would say stay away from any sort of rant or anything polical/serious social commentary. I say this as a person who generally supports this kind of expression, but in this setting it's just uncomfortable, even for your sympathizers. One of the co-valedictorians last year gave a very rambling speech that veered off into the enviornment and global warming and stuff like that. And while I certainly sypathized with his cause and understood and appreciated that this was his passion and the to-be concentration in college, it was a) poorly written (always bad!) and b) inappropriate for the setting and c) too long. None of the other speeches made an impact on me, but no impact is better than a bad impact, in my opinion.</p>
<p>The val's speech at my daughter's h.s. graduation was okay--short and sweet, but not really all that inspiring-- but someone else from the student gov't (can't remember now-- must have been the president of the student council)-- she got up and read a poem she had written-- fairly long-- and it was just incredible. Witty and clever, and also very poignant-- she managed to touch on everything about the 4 years that they'd experienced as a group--sometimes very specific events, and even including a line about 9/11, which occurred when they were freshmen. Really done so well, I thought-- very impressive.</p>
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I feel this needs a bump, because being a teenager, I would love some speech advice from parents other than my own.
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<p>Terse. (10 char)</p>