Al Capone. Solar Energy. The Importance of Being Multilingual. These are just a few of the topics chosen by Lake Forest Country Day (LFCDS) Upper School students for the 44th annual Robbie Bermingham Speech Contest. For this contest, each LFCDS Upper School students chooses a topic and writes a speech. They then present their speeches in front of their peers and the English department and a group of finalists is selected. For this year, fifth graders focused on Chicago, helping the English and social studies departments develop a closer connection. Many of the fifth graders chose to write speeches about Chicago landmarks, events, and issues such as going green. For the rest of the students, they prepared a speech on a topic of their own choosing, ranging across a broad spectrum—from the difficulties of being a leftie to cats. With the process starting at Thanksgiving time, students chose their topics, researched, wrote multiple drafts of their speeches, and practiced in front of their classes and peers until the finalists were selected. As is the case every year, the English department is always impressed at how professionally the students present their speeches and acknowledge the great value in learning research skills and public speaking. English teacher Jessica Hill talked about the process of learning to do good research and finding reliable resources as "such a gift" for students because they will do continue to do research throughout their education. This contest is held in high regard at the School also because public speaking is such a valuable skill; it puts many LFCDS students ahead of their peers.

The contest takes place all four years of Upper School, which allows students many opportunities to do public speaking. In addition to the rigorous process of doing research, editing, and presenting the speeches, the students also view past student’s speeches and evaluate them to help understand what qualities they are looking for. This year, twelve finalists were selected to present their speeches in front of an audience and judging panel, and those students were a great representation of the Upper School.

The winner of this year’s contest, sixth grader Joyce Caldwell, took the title for the second year in a row. For her topic she chose the issue of the education of women in Afghanistan because she felt it was an important and timely issue to address. Joyce talked about the process, saying "I wrote my speech a few times, summarized it on note cards, and practiced a lot." All in all she said "giving the speech was not too intimidating and it was exciting to have won, although I felt that everyone else did a great job, too." Her favorite part of the whole process was giving the speech at trials, finding out who would be presenting their speech, and then finding out the final winner. Joyce says she enjoys being up in front of a crowd and that having the skill of public speaking will help her out in the future, perhaps on the debate team once she gets to high school, and further on in her professional life.