Speech About Physical Disabilities

In April of my Sophomore year, my school had an awareness week about the treatment of minority groups. To end the week, the school had a group of students that are in a minority group make speeches to the entire school, which was run by my freshman English teacher. He asked me if I would like to give a speech about how I overcome Cerebral Palsy and how some people don’t realize how smart I am when they first see me. He informed me that he was planning to pair me up with another student who has Dyslexia and I would go right after her. Although I was initially scared to talk about my diagnosis to such a large group, I overcame my fear and agreed to give the speech. I centered my speech around my positive attitude towards disability and sought to console people that there is nothing intimidating about being with people who have disabilities. After I wrote my speech, I memorized it thoroughly and practiced speaking it aloud until I felt confident enough to say it in front of the whole school. I also practice timing it to make sure that I could read it within the three minutes time frame that was allotted. To be sure that everyone could understand what I was saying, my teacher put copied one sentence at a time to a PowerPoint presentation that was shown on the overhead board during my speech. Since each sentence was on a separate slide. I asked one of my friends to flip through the presentation as I was speaking. By the moment I needed to go on stage, I felt as prepared as I could ever be. However, my heart started thumping as soon as the piles of people started filling the seats in front of me.  I kept on thinking that I can do this – it is just like when I practiced at home. I felt a little more at ease when the girl before me finished her speech and everyone clapped. As I started speaking, I tried my best to go as slowly and clearly as possible. I paid full attention to what I was speaking, not letting myself focus on what everyone else was doing. When I finished, I got a STANDING OVATION and lots of clapping! At that moment, I was so proud to be able to conquer my fear and openly convey my thoughts and feelings about living with Cerebral Palsy. I was also very pleased to be so well respected by my school. This experience made me much more confident in telling people about my disability and its impact on my life. This day will always be amongst the best high school memories.

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