Hannah Kerman is a senior at Normal West High School who has been a part of the West speech team since her freshman year.
Kerman is fearless when it comes to her speaking skills, and with the help of several speech coaches, she has grown to enjoy the stress.
“Honestly, I like the stress. I like the pressure, and I think it’s fun. It doesn’t scare me anymore, which means when I do speeches in class, I just do them, I don’t feel nervous or anything,” Kerman stated.
To enhance her academics, Kerman has also taken AP French, Literature, and Biology.
Knowing Kerman’s talents, Dr. John Bierbaum, Normal West’s Social Studies Teacher and department chair, uncovered a scholarship opportunity for an oratory competition from the American Legion and suggested that Kerman is the best candidate for the competition.
“Every year, schools and the [social studies] department get a lot of offers that students can do to become involved in extracurriculars. This specific thing [for Hannah] is a scholarship opportunity. It is called an oratory competition where you have to give speeches on constitutional topics. It’s something that a lot of students don’t do. So, I got this flyer from the American Legion, and I just asked Hannah if she wanted to do it,” Bierbaum stated.
To prepare, Bierbaum helped Kerman research topics for the competition. This competition was based on prompts from the Constitution.
“I [helped her] research topics; it was based on the Constitution-really in-depth stuff. And then basically from there, she had to outline. She had to write, and she had to rehearse a series of speeches in order to compete,” Bierbaum added.
“I have mentored her through the process, answered questions as she’s had. Hannah is a very, very independent student. So like I said, I’ve had the easy job here. But we looked at the initial topics. There’s a prompt in which she had to answer.
“And so she and I went through the prompts and tried to understand exactly what parts of the Constitution, what examples might be good, what antidotes might be good. But ultimately, she made the executive decisions on what to do, how to do it, and how to write it,” Bierbaum added.
Kerman had to write about an aspect of the Constitution and its impact on citizens, as well as four different amendments.
To prepare, she wrote out her speeches to later memorize for the competition.
According to Bierbaum, candidates earn money based on their level.
“Well, usually they’re not a lot [of expectations] until Hannah Kerman came along. She has told me that she believes that she can have a really good chance of winning state, and that would be really exceptional.
“At each level, you win money. So at this level, I think she’s at the $2,500 level. [I think] she’s already qualified to win between $1000 and $2,500,” Bierbaum shared.
The Oratory competition occurred on Saturday, Mar. 7, at Heartland Community College.
There, Kerman placed third out of seven contestants overall and won $1,200.
Kerman is relieved that the hard work is over and plans to compete in future competitions for another opportunity at more scholarships.
Next up, Kerman has begun working on a new competition, the Joseph S. Rumbaugh Historical Oration Contest.
