Props, Presentations, and the Power of a Good Story
In middle school, we had to give monthly presentations in front of the whole class. For most kids, it was all about building confidence in public speaking — but for me, the talking was the easy part. I was always more focused on having the coolest visuals and props. One month, my friend and I went all out and built a life-sized crayon box for our presentation complete with custom t-shirts, about living as an inanimate object. Another time, we built Noah’s Ark. The real challenge wasn’t presenting — it was getting these oversized props through the classroom door!
Public speaking came naturally to me, thanks to my grandma. She and my poppy basically raised my three siblings and me while my mom, a corporate badass, woke up before the sun to take 3 forms of transport to her job in the city, and my dad, a police officer working twelve-hour patrol shifts, hustled to keep us all thriving. 4 kids in 5 years they needed every paycheck she could get! Grandma and Pop were there every morning getting us dressed, feeding us breakfast, driving us to school, and helping with homework. And yes, the getting dressed still applied when we were older because my little brother came down every single morning forgetting either his tie or his belt until he graduated highschool. Anyways, come the summer time grandma and pop still came over, we helped them schuck own for dinner, on rainy days we went to the library to rent a movie and on sunny days we played in the pool.
But my favorite tradition was our Friday storytelling days. At the start of each week, Grandma would give each of us a story title — like ‘The Church That Cried’ or ‘The Adventures of the Lost Balloon.’ We’d spend the week writing our stories, then gather on the porch to read them aloud to Grandma, Pop, and each other. Even though our audience was small, that practice grew our confidence immensely. We’d act out scenes, try on accents, and set the stage with little props like a wizard hat, a broomstick, whatever brought the story to life.
My grandma thought of doing this all on her own and it’s something we still laugh about and cherish to this day. It shaped our confidence in an area that can feel so shaky for most kids. Because of her, by the time middle school rolled around, I could memorize my entire presentation, just glancing at my notecards once or twice. That left me all the time in the world to build ridiculous, oversized props and have a blast doing it. Every time I speak in public now, I think about my grandma, the porch and how she turned storytelling into our superpower.
