With the Mentor high school students completing the first of our school’s 4 Speech Nights last night, I put a message on my alumni Facebook page asking if they remembered a specific speech now that they have been away from this school for a while.

15 years later, Gordie remembers his “magnum opus” on “The Eel” in his Grade 2 class. Michael, who just finished his Master’s remembers his excitement in his Grade 3 TEAM class that he got the exciting pioneer theme topic of “threshing”. Emma is Mom to a 2-year-old now but can name the Medieval roles/characters from almost her entire Grade 4 class. Even high school speeches are memorable; Jenny still thinks about Grade 9 classmate Jeff’s speech on the paper clip!

The most interesting post was from Geoff, who remembers the positive reaction from Grade 13 English teacher Mr. Gough after his speech “Why I Should Rule the World”. Geoff is now a father of two and an English teacher himself so perhaps we will need to wait for the next generation of world domination from a Grade 9 class.

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School