Public Speaking In High School

In Mr. Sickles’ class in 8th grade, we had to do a four-year plan. The goal for this was to see what class options we had in high school and what our schedules could potentially look like. Mr. Sickles told us that, as required by the school, we had to take either Public Speaking or Speech to get our speech credit. He further explained that Public Speaking is a transfer credit (a credit that might be able to transfer to our future college) if we take it Junior or Senior year. He also told us that if we took Speech, it would only count as a high school class. With all of this information, I decided my best option would be to take Public Speaking as a Junior. I did not want to stress out over this class my Senior year, so I should get it done Junior year. I wanted my Senior year to be a lighter load of classes. From my first to my third speeches, I think that I improved immensely. I feel more comfortable talking in front the class because I know the atmosphere. I do not care whether or not people will judge me; I only want to get my speech spoken and graded. Also, I think not practicing it a lot has really helped me. I only read through my speech one, and that is in my head, not out loud. I know it is bad to say that, but it works for me. I tend to overthink things way too much, so, when I start overthinking, my nerves start kicking in and my speech turns into a mess. Another way how I improved on speaking publicly is simply telling the story instead of annunciating it. When