Last February 14th, 2026, one 5th grader from our English UOI class won First Place in the very first “Kaichi Gakuen English Speech Competition”, elementary category. As every win comes through much time and effort, we will talk about his journey towards claiming the victory.

The whole goal of our training is to design the student’s own “Malala Version”. Therefore, at the beginning of our training, the student and I talked about having him take charge of the training and decide which parts he wanted to improve together. According to the student, he’s quite comfortable with his delivery, but he wants to improve his pronunciation first. He felt that it’s his current “weak point”, and to gain more confidence in his speech delivery, he needs to improve in this area. After hearing his own thoughts, we focused on improving his pronunciation by doing simple exercises and challenges weekly. 

Throughout the whole training process, my student was the one to identify which parts he wanted to improve. 

Of course, we didn’t just focus on the points to improve, but also magnified his own strengths. At the same time, we talked a lot about the message of the speech and found ways for my student to relate the story of Malala to his own life. I believe that the process of “owning the speech as his own” is the reason why my student was able to deliver the speech with much power and conviction.

As his teacher, I am very proud of my student. He was able to turn his “weakness” into his strength by acknowledging it and exerting much time and effort to improve. When I watched him deliver his speech during the competition, while it wasn’t his personal story, I still saw his individuality shine all throughout. I believe the audience felt it too! In the span of 2 minutes, I witnessed how all his own effort, time, and persistence work together so he can truly deliver the speech with confidence and conviction.

Congratulations again to our brave 5th Grader who used his voice to inspire others!