Mrs. Mazzarella, the head of Morgan’s English Department, began teaching a new class this year that focuses on developing public speaking skills and other important skills that will help later in life, job interviews, and leadership roles.
SEI (Speak, Engage, Influence) class was created to help students improve their presentation skills, speaking skills, and figure out how to brand themselves. It is a semester long class that any student can take and counts as a humanity credit. Last year, new elective choices were proposed to the Board of Education, and the Board selected the classes they believed would best benefit the student body.
Mazzarella hopes the course will give students confidence in their public speaking skills and prepare students for the adult conversations they will be met with after school. But she knows this will be a process.
One of the first assignments of this quarter focused on branding, specifically how to make yourself stand out – whether in job interviews or a college application.
“How come worldwide we can recognize the swoosh [from the brand, Nike],” Mazzarella pointed out. “How did that become so well known.” Mazzarella hopes her class will deliver that answer after learning the ways to properly brand and individualize themselves.
Currently, her class is working on making their own logos, something that represents them. They were instructed to make a logo that summarized them as a person. But they won’t stop there. Mazzarella hopes to make the course as authentic as possible.
“My hope is that they can pick an event, or an organization, or even a business locally, and that they do their marketing and branding plan for that, rather than a made up one,” stated Mazzarella. Mazzarella hopes that by creating a branding plan for a local organization or business, her students will be able to better connect to their community and bring attention to Clinton companies.
Despite only teaching the course for just over a month, Mazzarella said she sees a considerable change in her students already, pointing out how her students have begun to pick up on the importance of being prepared and planning ahead when it comes to public speaking.
“I definitely see an improvement already. If you ask them, I just hope they feel more confident.”
Sophomore, Libby Burns, a first time student of Speak, Engage, Influence, says that it has given her more confidence in her public speaking skills, and she feels more comfortable. “I definitely feel more comfortable writing speeches and talking in front of classes.”
Libby wasn’t originally signed up for this class, but when she spoke with Mrs. Mazzarella and found out that the class would be focusing on PR management and branding, she decided to stick with it, as those are topics that interest her. Libby stated, “You get to kind of show a side of yourself in that class that you don’t for other things.” Libby enjoys this class because it’s a small, fun group of people, and it allows them to talk about their topic of choice. They can express themselves in a way that they’re learning from.
By writing announcements, in-person presentations, and making videos, this class helps develop crucial life skills and will help students have a better understanding of public relations, public speaking, promotion, and much more.
The work isn’t too heavy, and it’s not very common for the students in this class to be assigned homework, unless they have unfinished classwork that needs to be completed. The classwork is compiled, so far, of writing a lot of different types of speeches.
Currently, there is only one public speaking class per semester due to the number of students signed up for the class. Mrs. Mazzarella hopes that more people will feel inclined to sign up, and she’s interested in seeing what other students want to get out of the class and the improvements they can make.
“If you’re someone who struggles with it [public speaking] or tries to avoid it,” said Mazzarella, “that’s exactly why you should take it.”
