For the next few days, I read my speech over and over again. When Thursday came along, I felt a little more confident. On my way to the Washoe County offices with Rebecca, I kept reading my speech to her. I wanted it to sound perfect. After a few practice runs, I sounded a lot more confident. When we went into the room where the meeting was held, it was kind of intimidating. The Washoe County Health Board was seated above us at a big table and microphones. I was the only teenager there.

When the meeting started, I started to relax a little bit more. I had no idea when I was going to have to give my speech, so I kept looking it over just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. When Julie Hunter (from AQMD) introduced Rebecca and me, I thought: “Oh boy, here we go….” I went to the front of the room, took the microphone, inhaled one big deep breath and began. While reading my speech, I felt like I was talking really fast but I consciously tried to speak slowly. I only stumbled a couple times. The room was silent as I talked, and all eyes were on me. When I told the Board that my school had reduced average idling time by 63%, there were gasps of amazement. And when I told the Board about our goal of having the school district adopt an Idle Free policy, there was lots of head-nodding and sounds of approval.

After my speech, we took pictures with our fancy new certificate. I felt so relieved that my speech was over. Rebecca told me about all the positive reactions from the audience to the accomplishments of the Idle Free Schools campaign. I was very happy that they liked my speech, which made me feel so much better.