"It'll be good a good skill for them to have," Rick* was insisting to a surprisingly large crowd of Chinese parents. "Public speaking is something that they're going to need to be able to do in the future if they want to be successful." He clicked to the next slide that contained images of the unmistakable Harvard and Yale logos. Just below it were the letters "M," "I" and "T."

"Chinese parents," Rick had been telling me at a meeting earlier that day, "will want anything college-related for their kids. We'll just tell them that this class will get them into Harvard!"

I didn't think that they'd take the bait that easily, but it turned out that Rick knew a thing or two more about Chinese parenting than I did.

The parents ooh-ed. They took pictures of the PowerPoint slides with their phones.

Rick beamed.

"And this class," Rick continued, with that megawatt, car insurance-salesman smile of his, "will be the first step for them to take."

"Thanks for coming, everyone. Sign up sheets are in the back."

Babel filled the room as everyone got up from their seats, noisily chatting with each other as they made their way toward the sign up desk. They couldn't wait to watch their second graders get into the Ivy Leagues!

A parent raised her hand and approached Rick and the other presenters, making her way through the crowd.

She looked a bit skeptical about the whole thing, as if suspecting that Rick and his organization were running a scam. But when she spoke, there were threads of hope woven in her voice. "What if my child is the type who's too scared to talk at all?" She gestured over to a little girl who hadn't been running around and dodging crowds of parents with the other little kids. Instead, she had been lazily stretched out on a couch in a very bored, almost arrogant manner.

James, another presenter who had been standing alongside Rick, chuckled, "When I was younger, I used to be so scared of people that I'd hide behind my mom whenever we went out in public.

"But now I'm fine. Public speaking is a skill that comes with time and practice," he assured her.

"And that's exactly what she'll get here with us!" Rick exclaimed, cutting in to plug the class once again. "Please sign up. We highly recommend it!"

And she happily scurried over to the sign up sheet along, merging into the wave of eager parents.

And thus, two weeks later I found myself standing in front of a class full of 8-year-old little girls with cute bows and pretty dresses and 8-year-old little boys with basketball shirts and spiky hair, running around and chasing each other with pencils and cooties. It soon became very clear that none of them wanted to be there. But that was OK, because if I were a kid, I probably wouldn't have wanted to be there either.

"I had to miss a birthday party for this." A round little kid named Bill told me.

I sympathized deeply.

The routine for each class was simple. We'd start off with an ice-breaker game, then review the reading comprehension homework, go through a slideshow on how to speak more efficiently and finally have the kids each go up to the front of the room and present a speech that they wrote over the week.

The game was always enjoyable. The reading comprehension always went by pretty smoothly. The slideshow lesson was usually okay.

But the actual presentation part — for some of them — was just dreadful. Once in a while, I'd encounter a kid so shy that he or she would flat out refuse to say a single word in front of the class (or in some cases, even get out of their seat).

"How do I get Amelia to give a speech in class?" I asked Marie-Grace, one of the other teachers, after another unsuccessful attempt at persuading/begging one of the most introverted (and undisciplined) kids in my class.

The entire class was chanting her name, like a crowd cheering for an athlete. Amelia shook her head. I told her that her friends could go up and stand there with her. She shook her head again. I told her that she could forget the speech and just introduce her name to everyone. And again. I told her that she could do it sitting down if she was scared to stand in front of the whole class. And again.

I wasn't even able to get a verbal "no" out of her.

Marie-Grace shrugged. "You don't."

And neither I nor any of the other teachers was ever able to get a speech out of Amelia that whole trimester.

Looking back, I wonder now if it had been Amelia who was stretched out on that couch back in August, on the day of sign up. Had it been her mom who Rick and James had so kindly reassured?

When I screw up (which happens quite often) I have a natural tendency to panic and over-analyze how it'll affect the way others view me. With that being said, my first instinct was to retreat into a state of absolute terror, in fear that Amelia's mom would expose our incompetence on WeChat for all the other Chinese moms to see. And my second instinct was to run my head over with a train for caring about such a trivial thing.

When I leave the classroom during dismissal, parents sometimes like to come up and how their little Jimmy did today. Did his speech go well? Has he improved his writing?

Amelia's mom was never one of them which gave me so much relief, but maybe it's the fact that she would never ask that made me so irresponsible as a teacher. I don't think that I could've ever explained how we continuously failed her and her daughter.

I'm assuming that if you've gotten this far through my article (shout out to you! I love you!) then you've at least read and tried to comprehend the title of it by now.

The way public speaking works is the same way riding a roller-coaster works. Chances are, you're going to embarrass yourself multiple times whether it be by passing out, throwing up, turning red or all three (and these "symptoms" apply to both of those things). But what's hardest is taking that first step. Then the second. Then the third, until it gets exponentially less frightening, until you realize that you're not going to die every time you turn upside down or drop a couple hundred feet or stutter a couple words.

No amount of peer pressure or coaching or whatever is going to take that step for you.

Your feet have to make that decision on their own.

This title was inspired by the saying that "every artist is self-taught." Of course, this doesn't mean that art teachers everywhere are utterly useless individuals who fail to contribute to a student's artistic development but rather that the teacher serves only as a guidance. You must learn from your own mistakes in art and find methods to fix them in the future that work for you. Observation is the key to teaching yourself anything, but practice is the key to getting yourself anywhere.

But first, you're going to need the courage.

And I hope that's something that we can help Amelia can realize one day.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of these individuals.