Current Events

Bosson and Dailey new speech and debate leadership

Alex Sisca
January 29, 2013

After Brian Gutowski, volunteer coach of the Speech and Debate Team, stepped down due to a changed work schedule, two WLHS employees stepped up to lead the team. Tonya Dailey, social studies teacher, and Jan Bosson, instructional assistant, are the team’s new coaches and administrators, with Dailey hosting and providing feedback at the team’s weekly meetings and Bosson coordinating tournament registration and transportation.

Dailey was an S&D coach at WLHS in the 1990s. Since tournaments are an all day affair, Dailey cannot attend them because she has two young children. When she was asked by Hunter Bosson, junior and S&D team vice president, and Elise Brown, senior and team president, to host meetings and give competitors advice on their performance, she gladly accepted.

“It’s a really profound skill, I want to help students communicate orally as well as in writing,” Dailey said. “I want to support pportunities and I value that they are doing it now. It’s harder to learn later in life.”

Dailey believes not being comfortable speaking publicly limits one from being able to communicate.

Bosson has two children, both students at WLHS and members of the team. Hunter, junior, competes in parliamentary debate and original oratory, and Taylor, freshman, is planning to compete in humorous interpretation. Parent carpool is the usual method of transporting competitors, but she was able to hire a bus to transport the team to its most recent tournaments at Pacific University, Glencoe High School and McMinnville High School.

Bosson has learned that S&D has something for every type of person.

“Since becoming involved, I have learned that speech and debate offers so many different possibilities to become involved. The events are many and diverse,” she said. “The S&D team offers many opportunities to practice and improve speaking ability.”

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About the Contributor

Alex Sisca, Reporter

Dazzling fireworks and decorative birthday cakes are the essence of July for Alessandra Sisca, Senior. While she celebrates the Fourth of July with usual traditions, the day marks the end of a two-day celebration that begins with her July third birthday.

“I don’t really think of it like my birthday,” Sisca said. “When it’s Fourth of July, I do what most people do—if we’re at the beach, sometimes [my family will] do a cookout and we’ll go to the parade—if we’re home we’ll do something quiet. My neighbors go up to Washington and buy fireworks, and basically you hear them from the time it barely gets dark until midnight. So we basically get our own firework show.”

The excitement of this summer has transitioned straight into the new school year. Sisca has been absent from Amplifier for the past two years, but she has decided to return to West Linn High School’s independent newspaper for her final year in high school.

For Sisca, freshman year of high school marked the beginning of a journey and a new passion. Sisca has worked with the Oregon City Children’s Theater as an aide in shows and a mentor to young actors for the last four years. The organization, according to Sisca, is an independently-run program that is “an open theater to anybody.”

For two shows, she has worked backstage, and recently Sisca debuted as an actress in two other shows. The shows that she has acted in were “Alice in Wonderland” as a Jabberwocky and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” as an Italian reporter. She was able to take advantage of her Italian heritage by displaying an authentic Italian accent.

“I kind of tried to imitate the way my grandparents speak,” Sisca said.

Because the productions are put on by a small collection of people, fundraising is done completely by those who run it. The sets, according to Sisca, are not as extravagant as Broadway and even some high school displays, but she considers them to be a good quality for a community theater. Sisca’s favorite set was from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“It was a lot of fun to set up all the rooms in the factory, “ Sisca said. “It was a lot of fun to watch everything come to life.”

Sisca feels that theater has helped herself grow as a person.

“I’ve learned a lot about myself through theater. It’s kind of fun because the director, Michelle, makes the experience fun for everyone,” Sisca said.

While Sisca is involved with the theater beyond school, she hopes to sleep at a decent hour and raise her GPA. After high school, Sisca plans to fulfill her graduation requirements and afterwards attend the University of Windsor in Canada. There she will study business in the hopes of one day running her own dress shop. This shop, Sisca described, will contain dresses of all shapes, sizes, colors and styles.