results of the speech contest

Alas, my student lost the speech contest. The middle school students were separated into 2 groups: A and B. A being those who haven't lived abroad, and B consisting of the ones who have. My student of course, was in B. 


Now. Why didn't he score higher? Because, as one of the people running the contest explained to me: had he used hand gestures and made eye contact with the audience, he would have earned more points. 


Just for the record, my student is blind. Needless to say, my co-teacher was livid, and vented in the car that they didn't understand people who are blind or have low vision. In this case, no- they didn't consider the reason why the student didn't use hand gestures or look more directly at the judges. 


I mean... seriously?


But otherwise, he did an excellent job.