“Be fearless,” were Mrs. Wendy Melchior’s repeated words to North Penn’s public speaking students these past weeks in Kevin Manero’s classroom.

And fearless those students became.

While learning about the methods and skills of campaign speech writing and delivering, the students had the opportunity to get an inside scoop on the true art of the campaign speech by professional political speech writer Mrs. Wendy Melchior. The students were able to brainstorm, write, deliver, and get feedback with an expert who writes for candidates such as governors of various states, including Christine Jones of Arizona. Soon to be her focus is the incoming presidential candidates for the 2016 race, a monumental role.

Melchior is not only the mother of two students and a graduate of North Penn, but also went to North Penn in the last years of her high school career. Manero’s invitation to come and speak to students is always a favorite time of the year for her.

“I come twice a year when Mr. Manero invites me to his public peaking classes… It’s so much fun, that’s the first thing I would say,” said Melchior.

As someone learning the components and skills of writing a speech, I found it very cool that someone of such expertise was helping me along in the speech writing process, something that I could always use improvement on. As for the class as a whole, the insight given to us was extremely useful in the work we displayed, a three to five minute class president campaign speech.

“I think students benefit from people who have real life experience. I have found that life is a lot about who you know and what experiences and opportunities you seize. So I’m hopeful that by coming in and saying ‘here is my path, here is how I did what I did,’ will encourage and inspire young people to go and seize what they want for themselves.”

While Melchior would talk to the class, the students were very attentive to not just the physical speech writing aspect, but to the non-writing aspects as well, such as being fearless and going out and opening doors that can lead you to numerous opportunities.

And yes, that word ‘fearless’ kept popping up throughout the time she was with us.

“I remember the very first time that I was asked to go out and get involved in politics as a speech writer. I can remember thinking ‘I don’t even know if I have the skillset.’ It was brand new to me, but I went and I tried it anyway and I discovered that I had some skills that I didn’t realize I had at the time. I think fear can paralyze young people because they see how competitive things are, they feel like they lack the skills, they want to be instantaneously successful, but I’m a big believer in mistakes,” explained Melchior.

By the end of her time with us young, theoretical ‘class presidential candidates and speech writers,’ we had grown a better understanding of speech writing and life goals. In fact, we all saw the improvement in the way we delivered our speeches. Some of the students gave remarkable and persuasive addresses to the class and left us all wondering, ‘Why didn’t any of us run for class president?’

“For me, it was ‘get on the plane,’ you know, just taking the steps to try. You’re going to make many mistakes, but go at the opportunity, do it fearlessly, and the sky’s the limit,” concluded Melchior.

So watch out Oval Office… Maybe in the years to come a North Penn public speaking graduate will be sitting behind that polished desk, giving credit to the help and insight given to them by non-other than Mrs. Wendy Melchior.