Method. The vocations to choose from are the ones in the poem: craftsperson, artisan (musician with a lute), carpenter, electrician, boatman, shoemaker, cook, designer, mason. Pick five that are clearly different from one another, so the group does not repeat itself.
Speak in the first person throughout — “I am…”, not “A carpenter is…”. Build the one to two minutes on the six points the book lists, roughly fifteen seconds each: who you are → what you do → where you work → an experience → a problem → a message. Research one real detail (a tool, a material, a working hour, a wage) so the speech has something in it that could not have been invented at your desk. Bring one prop or one gesture if you can. Finish on the message; do not trail off.
What a good speech must contain: a specific place, not ‘everywhere’; one named tool or material; one honest difficulty; one line that shows pride in the work; and a message addressed to the audience rather than to the teacher.
I am Anil Das, and I am a boatman. My family has fished off this coast for four generations; my grandfather could name every sandbank between here and the river mouth without a map.
I leave the shore at four in the morning, when the sea is still black, and I am usually back by eleven. My work is to read the water — where the current turns, where the shoal will be at that hour — and then to lay the net, wait, and haul it in. My hands know the rope better than my eyes do. We sing while we pull; it keeps the rhythm even and it keeps ten men’s arms together.
The best days are the ones when the net comes up heavy and the whole boat laughs. But there are hard days too. The catch is smaller every year, and diesel costs more than it used to. When the weather warning comes on the radio we do not go out at all, and on those days we earn nothing. Nobody insures a small boat.
My message is simple. When you eat fish, remember that somebody woke at three in the morning for it. Respect the sea, do not throw plastic into it — and respect the people who go out on it. As our poem says, we “return to tell the tales of life at sea”. Come to the shore one morning and I will tell you a few.