The Art of Public Speaking

A five- to seven-minute speech can be a thing of great beauty. Executed well, it can take an audience to the highest of highs or the lowest of lows—or both. A talk can make people laugh, then quiet, then grow pensive.

It can make them recognize something they had never quite put into words. And, on a really good day, it can reduce those of us prone to tears to a veritable puddle.
 
Long ago, when I started British Parliamentary debating, this is how the power of public speaking was explained to me and it has stuck. This summer, I turned 50 (!) and, despite trying to avoid it, knew I would eventually have to stand before an audience of well-disposed folk and say a few things. 
 
My words may have sounded conversational, but the preparation behind them was pointed and deliberate. I knew which lines I wanted to land, whom I wanted to look in the eye, where the pauses would come. Most importantly, despite imagining myself Daniel Webster when before an audience, I knew I had to pay attention to the room—particularly to one of my friends’ husbands, whose face would indicate that it was time to wrap up.

A good speech requires much more than having something to say. It requires judgment.

The GPS Chapel Talk, given by the members of the senior class, is one of our most beloved traditions, and rightly so. A girl will usually spend her years at GPS observing the ritual several times per week, developing a sense for its cadence, rhythms, and patterns. By seventh grade, she will have developed a sixth sense for when a speech is about to end, subconsciously edging forward in her seat in the Frierson Theatre, knowing school’s dismissal is imminent. She will form strong opinions about those she likes, those she doesn’t, and those that work.
 

Long before she is asked to write a Chapel Talk of her own, she will have been apprenticed. She will remember moments that brought laughter or tears, girls who lost their place and recovered, ordinary stories made spectacular in the delivery, speeches paired with performances that shine, and songs sung together by friends who are sisters in all but name. Through repeated exposure, consciously or not, she will come to know what makes a Chapel Talk feel authentic, what makes one drag, and what happens when a speaker tries to cover too much too quickly.
Witnessing Chapel Talks is an extraordinary education in rhetoric and, in her senior year, she gets to deliver her own.Five to seven minutes may not sound like much, but it is enough. Enough to tell a story, make us laugh, make us think, share something deeply personal, or offer an insight that stays with us long after her friends have rushed the stage. Each senior makes choices designed to enthrall us. What matters enough to say? What can be left out? How does she turn a collection of memories into a compelling story and cap it off with an ending that truly lands? 

 
For those few minutes, she stands before her community—an audience of about 600 peers and teachers, family and friends—with nothing but herself, a lectern, her preparation, and her voice. No amount of clever design can rescue unfocused thought; she needs to stand tall, read the room, take the breath, make eye contact, and trust in the work that she has done—and in herself.
 
Her Chapel Talk isn’t effortless. She has spent years watching, listening, and planning. And now she is ready to put her own particular spin on it, adding her voice to the thousands that came before.
 
That is the art of the Chapel Talk and the beauty of the apprenticeship model: You watch others do it, then you try. Eventually, you stand on your own, secure in the knowledge that you are prepared enough for everyone else to simply experience the result. And if you have done it really well, you can forget for a few minutes just how much work went into making something so big look effortless and maybe, just maybe, take a beat to enjoy the spotlight, knowing that you, too, have created a thing of great beauty for those around you.