Dupage Policy Journal

At its April 17 meeting, the Glen Ellyn District 41 Board of Education recognized Glenbard West student Rachel Travers for her accomplishments at the Illinois High School Speech State Champion competition. 

Rachel won first place in the Dramatic Interpretation Speech event. This is an 8-minute monologue event that students must recite from memory on stage, without the use of props or visual aids. It is an individual competition, meaning the student is the sole performer.

Rachel attended the meeting to speak to the board about her experience and performance. Board president Robert Bruno asked Rachel to speak about the process of making it to state and the content and message of the speech she chose. 

She was unable to perform the speech for them, as it was over eight minutes, but she shared a summary of it. Rachel adapted a play written about the Sandy Hook School shooting and turned it into an eight-minute monologue from the perspective of a mom who had two daughters in the school, talking with her husband on the phone while he tries to pick the girls up from school.

“And so what I really liked about this piece is that many dramatic monologues, something horrible happens and that they lose somebody,” Rachel told the board. “And fortunately in my monologue, my daughters did not die in this experience, but obviously others did. And so the shooting takes place in the first few minutes and then the rest of it serves as a piece of advocacy for gun control. And I felt that that was very important and I was so proud that I was able to give that speech in front of hundreds of people. And then it was livestreamed and there's a video of it on YouTube. And it's just something that I felt I could be proud of myself for, of going up on a stage and being somebody that was advocating for gun control and that this is something that's very important and that kids in elementary school are losing their lives over this. And I felt like if a person like a teenager could be advocating for that, then it could mean something.”

The board was moved by the content and message of her speech, asking if she gave the same speech throughout all sectional and regional competitions, which she did. Rachel took second place in the category at both competitions. 

Rachel's mom jokingly agreed with the board when they asked that she has had years of practice being dramatic at home.

The board uploaded a livestream of its public meeting to the district’s YouTube channel.

In other business, the board discussed updated and new job descriptions for the districts.

The board will meet again at 6:30 p.m. on May 15 at Hadley Jr. High on 240 Hawthorne Blvd.