Gardena Team Talks Up a Storm : Education: This high school forensic league’s members learn about self-confidence, current events, fund raising, and international foods as they roll through win after win.

Gesturing expressively, her face now smiling, now sorrowful, Tracy Kobayashi was telling a children’s story to a roomful of her classmates at Gardena High School.

Her voice, lilting and well-modulated, ebbed and flowed without falter as she told a sad Japanese saga about a little girl who helps a disabled boy climb a tree. In command of herself and her audience, she showed no hint of nervousness.

Once achingly shy, Kobayashi, 18, says that her storytelling gifts might have gone undiscovered had she not become a member of the school’s speech club.

“I’m not shy any more,” Kobayashi said with a laugh after finishing a practice performance last week.

Kobayashi is a member of the award-winning Forensic League at Gardena, coached by speech and English teacher Lois Paddor. The team has won the Los Angeles Unified School District’s All-District Speech tournament every year since it was started three years ago.

So far this year, the team has already triumphed at the fall tournament of the Western Bay League, one of two local high school leagues in Southern California. The league--which stretches from northern Los Angeles to San Pedro--includes 32 private and public schools from seven school districts; Gardena placed first at both the novice and the varsity levels.

And for 11 consecutive years, Gardena’s National Forensic League chapter has been selected one of 80 outstanding high school chapters, said Albert Odom, assistant secretary at the league’s headquarters in Ripon, Wis. The league, an honor organization of more than 2,000 high schools nationwide, chooses outstanding chapters based on points earned for participating in local speech activities and retention of chapter members, he said.

“I’m really proud of our kids,” Paddor said. “They accomplish things and compete against schools with budgets five times what ours are.”

About 80 Gardena students are National Forensic League members, and about 110 are enrolled in speech classes this semester, Paddor said. The program will expand by about 35 students next semester, she said.

The walls of Paddor’s classroom at Gardena High are lined with plaques and the shelves are crammed with trophies from local competitions, many sponsored by community organizations. More trophies have been boxed away and are kept in storage, Paddor said.

Paddor and her students credit their winning ways to a combination of hard work, intensive practices with meticulous attention to detail, a sense of fun and family, a spirited cheerleading section replete with pompons--and good food.

Communal meals are an eagerly anticipated break in a day of grueling competition, students say. Typically, such days begin on a Saturday around 7 a.m. with a bus or car-pool ride to the host school and may end as late as 10 p.m., when students return home from competitions.

For fortification, some schools bring brown bag lunches or go to nearby fast-food restaurants for lunch. But Gardena has established a grander tradition--a pot-luck feast planned days in advance, in which the team’s multicultural students bring everything from sushi to soul food, Paddor said.

“You wouldn’t believe it; it’s an international smorgasbord,” said Paddor, who says the picnic lunches foster a sense of community and meet a need “to get (students) fed so they don’t faint on me in the afternoon competition.”

Senior Glynda Johnson summed up the program’s appeal: “It’s the food, it’s the company, it’s the friendships and the competition--being afraid that you’re not going to win in anything.”

Students, who sometimes refer fondly to their instructor simply as “Paddor,” credit her and Principal Tamotsu Ikeda--who attends the weekend competitions--for their success and high morale.

Paddor, 49, has taught for more than 26 years, the last 15 at Gardena, she said. In 1986-87, she was named the school district’s Teacher of the Year for the senior high schools division, said Maynae Lew, a communications adviser who coordinates the districtwide competition.

“She’s probably the biggest cheerleader for the kids,” Lew said.

“I think the kids love Lois Paddor and they want to do well for her,” said Joanne Erdos, a speech and English teacher at Marshall High School who is the president of the Senior High School Assn. of Speech Educators for the Los Angeles area.

Some students, like senior Brad Marroquin, say the opportunity to work with Paddor was a major reason for signing up.

“My sister and brother had her in speech before, and they told me how good she is,” said Marroquin, adding that the program “has made me feel a lot better about myself and it’s a lot easier to talk to people.”

The program attracts an assortment of students, from the formerly bashful kids like Kobayashi and Marroquin, to self-described natural talkers like Johnson and rapper/orator Sean Bell, to class valedictorian and speech club President Lynne Murakami.

“We have to work hard, and that’s the fun,” Murakami said.

Last week, speech students practiced in front of various English classes, giving them an opportunity to rehearse in front of an audience and to introduce the speech program to students who are unfamiliar with it.

Bell, an 18-year-old senior, performed a rap scenario that he wrote. Titled “I’m in a Gang,” the story relates the tragic life and untimely death of a Los Angeles teen-ager immersed in gangs and drugs, who ignores a counselor’s warning: “If you live by the knife, you die by the knife.”

Senior Stephanie Canas, 17, practiced reciting a passage from a novel, “Flowers in the Attic.” In January, Canas will represent the district in Sacramento in a statewide competition sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

After one performance, in a burst of enthusiasm, Johnson urged non-members to sign up for the program: “Really, join! It’s so much fun, you can do whatever you want to do.”

Paddor and other speech teachers also extol the merits of speech programs. The grueling competition requires months of preparation, including library research, knowledge of current news events, logic, memorization, developing public speaking techniques and communicating complex ideas to an audience. The program can help students improve grades, self-esteem and self-confidence.

“It encourages critical thinking, analysis and organization of time,” said Erdos, of Marshall High School. “They learn research skills and they develop leadership qualities.”

For competitions, students choose from among 13 categories, including storytelling, dramatic interpretation, expository speaking, spontaneous argumentation, original advocacy and impromptu speaking.

Various local and citywide competitions begin in the fall and continue throughout the school year. But a problem at many schools--including Gardena--is a lack of funds to get the students to competitions.

“Money is always a problem,” said Paddor, who said Gardena uses a combination of student body funds and money from fund-raisers to pay for transportation costs and entry fees. Entry fees to the district’s tournament, for example, are $5 or $6 per student, and schools are limited to 60 entrants, Lew said. Gardena typically enters at least 35.

“You’re always looking to sell a few more candy bars, T-shirts or buttons,” Paddor said.

Whatever the difficulties, Paddor and her students say, the results are worth the effort.

Junior Shelly Ward said: “The other schools know Gardena is the team to beat--but they never do. . . . We try to be like a family. We cheer for each other, and we cry with each other when we win trophies.”

Said Murakami: “Not only is it a good opportunity to experience public speaking--what’s meant a lot to me is the team spirit.”