Updated curriculum makes speech communications an elective

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Photo by Lauryn Sanchez

Ms. Amanda Gustafson’s speech communications class poses before giving presentations. The now-required class will still be included in course offerings next year, but will no longer be a required freshman course.

Lauryn Sanchez, Staff Writer

As one of many curricular changes planned for next school year, speech communications class will be redesignated as an elective rather than as a graduation requirement at Cathedral Catholic High School.

“The material is important and we are not devaluing what speech is,” Principal Mr. Kevin Calkins, who made the final decision, said. “The delivery of the skills that one gains through a speech class should be embedded through all classes, not one.”

Starting in the 2016-2017 school year, CCHS will no longer require students to pass speech communications in order to graduate. Rather, administration, academic department heads and the curriculum committee currently are re-working the entire curriculum to require more speeches and presentations in all classes.

The goal is to teach students communication skills in a variety of environments for a variety of audiences rather than just presenting speeches in only one course.

“I want to develop a school-wide approach, starting with freshmen next year and then every year we will build the next grade level so we have something that is actually comprehensive,” Mr. Calkins said.

The freshmen curriculum will be updated for the coming school year. Updating all four grade levels at once does not serve as a feasible goal, so this will be done in increments during the course of the next four years, Mr. Calkins said.

Formerly, CCHS and the Academy of Our Lady of Peace were the only private high schools in San Diego to include the course within their graduation requirements. To many students, the class has become null and void as it is not a University of California admissions requirement.

However, some teachers still find the skills vital.

“The old speech curriculum, as originally started by Andrea Fulton at Uni and honed by Marilyn Harmaning, Christy Bailleul and many others, contained so many valuable lessons about how to communicate with people in a multitude of scenarios people will face throughout their lifetimes,” Mrs. Lisa Ogden, one of three CCHS speech teachers, said. “I feel disappointed that future CCHS students will not have the opportunity to learn [speech].”

During the past couple years, the content of speech communications has been altered from the original USDHS-inspired content to a more competitive speaking-oriented one with different techniques used to engage students.

Even with these attempts to update the course, “education has been changing and the landscape is much different,” Mr. Calkins said.

Alongside the split opinions of staff, students also have struggled to accept the change, though most students recognize that it is for the better.

“It’s not perfectly fair; I wish I was not forced to take the class,” Mariano Sanfilippo ‘16 said. “But I’m not the one affected here, as I’m moving on to college. For the students coming behind me, this is beneficial.”

While learning the basics of public speaking in their other classes, future freshmen will gain a schedule opening for a semester. This change will provide the flexibility for students to add a semester elective such as speech, psychology or sociology. A full complement of electives for freshman will be made available in next year’s curriculum guide.

“It’s like we ate broccoli for a year, which was good for us and all, but we didn’t like it,” Alyssa Silva ‘19 said. “Now, [future freshman] get to have ice cream.”

While this change might represent good news for prospective students and those students who took the placement test Jan. 23, current freshman, like Silva, are disappointed they are the last wave of students required to take speech.

Yet, even if the change was made just one year earlier, this semester has still “boosted our confidence,” Silva said.

Although speech communications will no longer be a graduation requirement, many teachers hope students will recognize the importance of being a competent public speaker and enroll in speech as an elective.

“Speech helps overall,” Communications Department Chairwoman Ms. Amanda Gustafson said. “I love to teach speech, and I definitely expect student interest in it.”