As each student arrived, some wearing new suits and blazers, I told them good morning and to grab whatever seat they would like. As they passed me, I handed each one a personalized letter I had written to them. It's been a tradition I've kept with our state team. The morning of competition, I give each student a letter telling them how proud I am and all the things I admire about them. It's become one of the things I look forward to each year. Often, more than one student ends up crying.
I didn't want to be around while they are crying, though. I'd rather let the letter do the talking.
At one point I left the bus running and went into the school building to grab a backup laptop. I was alone. I took just a moment of that solitude to stop and say a quick prayer for my students--that they would learn and grow from today. I also prayed for myself--that I would not get too wrapped up in their success or failure--that I would keep things in perspective.
I finished my prayer and looked up. I was standing next to the trophy case.
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I became a forensics coach on accident.
I know. It's pretty tough to "accidentally" fill out an application for a job and then agree to do that job. But what I did is about as close to that as you can get.
I finished my first year of teaching freshman and sophomore English in Buhler feeling pretty good about where I was. My strength as a teacher generally comes from my ability to speak in front of a group. If I can get an opportunity to talk about something I love, I can sometimes get others to love it, too. Excitement can be contagious and I grasped pretty early that if I'm not excited about what I'm teaching, my students won't be excited about what they're learning.
My building principal noticed this and eventually I was asked by another teacher in my hallway if I had thought about applying for the vacant debate and forensics position for the next school year. I was told not many people had applied for the position and it was uncertain what would happen with the program. The teacher telling me this brought up my past as an editor-in-chief of a newspaper in college and other experiences where it had felt like I was undergoing baptism by fire. I also was (and still am) a news junkie, choosing NPR over almost anything else whenever Morning Edition happens to be on. Surely those experiences would help me acclimate.
I figured I could pick up debate and forensics relatively easy.
I was wrong.
Like, stupid wrong.
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We were in third place. Half of our entries had made it to semifinals.
And I was nervous.
I may have drank about half a metric ton of coffee that morning, which didn't help. I also hadn't exactly slept the best the night before. On top of that, it was tough for me to sit down and hold still. I had never been this nervous at a forensics meet. I've generally been pretty fatalistic at tournaments. I'm zen. I'm in the moment. I'm in an attitude of perspective. "Whatever will be will be." You know?
What a load of crap. I'm a coffe-fueled fraud in the first degree.
We were in third place.
Which was good. I was hoping we would be in third place. Knowing our forensics competition throughout the state of Kansas, I did not think we would be in the running for first or second. Sterling and Norton High School were in a dead heat for the top two spots but we were in position to bring home a state trophy. The first forensics state trophy in Halstead's history.
The state tournament was proving to be a dream run. We had students giving perhaps their best performances of the year and the results were showing it. Judge after judge was rating each of our competitors the best in their rooms over and over again.
They were pumped.
They were nailing it.
We went outside and did our warmups again. All of us as a team. Even the ones who did not advance. The ones whose day was done. We all went through our warmups, all our tongue-twisters. We also sing the theme song to "The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire" as part of it. I told them all how proud I was of them. How they had already achieved something great and special. We all put our hands in and said "Dragons on three! 1, 2, 3, DRAGONS!"
Then, they went to find their rooms and compete. Confident in themselves. Ready to knock it out of the park. I pulled one student aside, Patrick, and we drilled his delivery for the introduction to his persuasive speech. A few minutes later, it was sounding much better and he left to find his room. Meanwhile, I went upstairs to work in the tab room and wait on results. My wife was there with me. She watched me pace and listened to me blabber for over an hour. Until the first ballot came in.
We were in third place.
Half our entries were in semifinals.
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Nothing has been more difficult in my professional life than figuring out debate and forensics. I had never actually done debate and forensics in high school (outside one competition where I tried to do extemp...it did not go well). Often, coaches have experience competing at the collegiate level, let alone the high school level.On top of that, I was taking over a program that had won a state title in debate just the year before, that traveled to compete at nationals ever year, and that needed an assistant coach hired. Oh, and I didn't know anyone that could help me.
Oh, did I also mention that not only had I never coached debate or forensics before, I had not coached ANYTHING before? Like, I did not know what a student needed to hear from me before competiting in an activity that most adults would find absolutely terrifying. "Go get 'em, Tiger." That's a coach-y thing to say, right?
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My wife was watching me pace and talk. Every now and then I would catch myself and try to sit down. But a few minutes later I would be up and moving again.
The year had been going incredibly well, for experienced students and new students alike. It's always neat to see first-year students do well at this activity. But it's rewarding to see your experienced students do well, too.
Jessie was one such student. She was a holdover from a previous coach. She first fell in love with forensics when someone else was in charge of the program. Every year she competed, she qualified for State in an acting event or prose.
Once, she told me her impression of me had been when I had first introduced myself to the Halstead students. She summed it up like this:
I was a little surprised by that. "Why!? I thought I had been charming!"
"Oh, you were totally charming. That just made us hate you even more."
The previous coach had done a good job working with her students. There were several who absolutely loved competing in forensics and they loved the family that forms whenever you join a team like that.
But I won them over. I was happy that Jessie said everything in the past tense because, as she put it, I "had my work cut out" for me.
Jessie was immediately a positive influence on the team. Never down. Never negative. She would keep things in perspective. The world could be going to hell in a handbasket, but she was going to give the same performance she always would.
Her senior year, she spent a good chunk of time working with the first-year students. She helped them to block their performances, gave instruction on how to hold the prose book properly, and came up with games for the whole team to play together to create a family atmosphere.
On top of that, she had taken a script that was essentially a 10-minute monologue and added so many small details to her performance that her judges could not help but get pulled in by her performance. There were no gimmicks, no funny voices, not screaming. She would just...talk. And every inflection in her tone, every change in her facial expressions would contribute to the story she was telling.
And now she was in semifinals. And I could not stop thinking about her and everyone else on the team and all the hours they had put into their performances and how much they deserved the chance to make it to finals. How much they deserved to take home a state trophy.
I went back to pacing.
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Imagine that you have never played football before. Now imagine being told that you are going to be the head coach for the Indianapolis Colts. Maybe you've had a nightmare like that before.Before my first year coaching, I moved out of my classroom in the English hallway and downstairs to the old drama room, which would now be the debate and forensics room.
Things went about as well as you'd expect. In that it inspires a longing for a stiff drink. My kids all knew more than me. And they knew it. For smart kids, knowledge is capital, and debate and forensics draws a lot of smart kids.
According to a math teacher in my building, Mr. Regehr, communication might just be the number one problem in the world today. That probably holds true even before you realize you don't know what it is you need to communicate.
Like travel sheets. It might be a good idea to make them and detail who is traveling, where they're traveling, how long they'll be traveling, and what they need to bring along for their travels.
It's tough to communicate that when you don't KNOW the answers to many or all of those simple questions.
And that's before you even get to the content-related stuff. What adjustments should be made to this performance? What case should we write for debate? Is it appropriate to tell a political joke in a speech on current events?
Small problems like that grow and lead to bigger problems. In a void of information, students take matters into their own hands and that just creates chaos. Like a ship without a captain.
I had a small handful of first-year students. And I learned right along with them. I would teach myself a debate concept one day and then turn around and try to teach it the next day. During forensics season, I tried to do the same thing. I would learn how to address a particular issue in delivery or learn the rules to a particular event and then try to share that the next day. For my first-years, it was ok. For my experienced students, it wasn't near enough.
Word got out. In the world of debate and forensics everyone knows everyone. I showed up to tournaments with my kids late. I didn't always have the entry fee with me. My students made arguments that made no sense.
Other schools could see the program was floundering, even if your own building doesn't necessarily know it. In some schools I was known as "the bus driver" because that's all that I was good for.
I was miserable.
Being incompetent and fully aware of your incompetence is one of the worst feelings in the world. I felt like I had done everything wrong that I possibly could.
Then, at the end of the year, I was given an out by my principal. He was worried that I might leave for another district and he made it very clear to me that he'd rather I stay. He would let me go back to teaching English full time if I wanted to.
I thought about it. Going back to teaching the subject I was in love with in the first place was incredibly appealing to me. I could focus on something I felt proficient in. Something more comfortable.
Something I felt like I was better at.
But a really backwards thought hit me: This year was so rough, so challenging, so incredibly draining that I felt like it COULDN'T just all be for nothing.
I had to see if there was any improvement in myself. I had to give myself a chance to do better and to BE one year better.
I signed on for another year.
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I stopped pacing and checked the clock. The extempers would be almost done now.
Extemp is probably the most difficult event in forensics (and also my favorite). Quite a few students are terrified of how it works. Students draw three current events questions, put two back, and get 30 minutes to make a 7-minute speech answering the question using only the files you bring to the meet with you.
You're allowed to use a note card. But it's more impressive if you don't and just rely on your memory for all the sources and pieces of information you're using.
It's definitely something that causes your adrenaline to pump. Extempers have to get comfortable with a lot of early failure while they figure out the event and build confidence.
And that confidence is so important. My two extempers, Sara and Olivia, were good. In fact, they had finished first and second at the last meet we had been to before State. They were both capable of making it to finals so long as they could stay cool and collected. One mistake can sometimes multiply into several mistakes, even for the best extempers. You can't let stress get to you, especially when that stress originates from outside the round.
We had talked about that. About how you have to clear your mind of everything and make yourself calm. We did breathing exercises, we meditated, we had conversations about the big picture, about how no matter what happens, your value as a person is not determined by one activity, by one speech, no matter how important that speech is.
And this speech was important.
The round was almost over.
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My second year was still not fantastic, but at the very least, I could see some things were at least minor improvements.
First, I was moved back upstairs to my old room in the English hallway, which was a thousand times better. I knew our English department was really, really good (I was still teaching three sections of English), but the isolation of being the only debate and forensics coach in a building was so much worse being on a different floor from my department.
One thing I noticed I had done right was recruiting the previous spring. I had gone to the middle school and pitched the program. I had attended parent meetings for incoming freshmen. I did everything I could to convey nothing but excitement for a program I felt like I was failing. I tried to make my excitement infectious.
It worked.
Unlike my first year, where we had only three first-year students, I found myself with 16 students willing to sign up and try debate and forensics.
I still did not have the team culture down right. My advanced students still wanted to be the ones to run things and there was often friction regarding my own leadership. But they were winning. And my new students were buying in to me. They may not have been winning all that much, but they were trying hard.
What's more, with a year under my belt, I knew enough to have a very basic level of competence.
Travel sheet? Check.
Running home meets? Check.
Oranizing system of evidence? Check.
I reached out to other coaches and tried learning from them all that I possibly could. I had enough base knowledge that I felt like I knew what questions to ask.
There were still a number of things I was terrible at. But at the very least I was confident some of the new students would be returning. And they did. The felt like they had grown a lot over the last year. They didn't feel completely lost or unsupported. They believed I could help them continue to improve. And that was something. It was something that was mine. The third year, we qualified nine students to State debate and eight of those students had only ever had me as their coach. Four of them even advanced past the preliminary rounds. It would be my last year in Buhler but debate and forensics were now so ingrained in me that I couldn't imagine teaching without it. I took a job with a shorter commute to be closer to my growing family. I was still going to be coaching.
I started to wonder just how much I might get better.
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Throughout the day, different coaches walk over to the computer that contains the team placings. It automatically syncs with all the results being entered throughout the day. There are over 300 entries at this meet and it takes time to record everything electronically. They could see the top three schools:
1st: Norton High School
2nd: Sterling High School
3rd: Halstead High School
I know many of the coaches at 3A state. There are so many fantastic people who have helped me out over the years. But there are also several coaches that I never see, that do not compete against us much.
"Who's Halstead?"
"Did Halstead just move to 3A this year?"
"Who is the Halstead coach?"
I heard a fair number of these questions. Generally, people have an idea in their head of who the top schools usually are. And that's fair. You get used to seein certain schools and certain coaches at the top of certain activities. You expect to see Alabama towards the top of the NCAA football rankings. You don't expect to see Iowa State there, though. Or at least if you did, it spurs discussion.
But it underscored two things I already knew: I'm not a well-known coach and Halstead isn't a school you see in the top tier. A selfish part of me wanted to change that. I wanted to be well-known and I wanted my kids to be well-known. I wanted people to notice when my kids were competing, when they were speaking.
I wanted to bury the memories of the failures I had from my first year coaching.
Maybe a state trophy would help me to do that.
1st: Norton High School
2nd: Sterling High School
3rd: Halstead High School
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3:30. The round was over.
For semifinals, students compete in rooms of six people. In general, if you finish in the top three of your room, it's enough to make it to finals. As the ballots came in and were tabulated, I recorded how each one of our semifinalists finished in their rooms:
4th
4th
3rd
1st
4th
4th
6th
2nd
Three. We had advanced only three to finals.
I looked at the computer that records the points for each school.
1st: Norton High School
2nd: Sterling High School
3rd: Nemaha Valley High School
4th: Halstead High School
We were in 4th. Passed by a school that had five entries in finals. Mathematically, it was now virtually impossible for us to catch them. We finished the day in 4th place.
I closed my notebook and walked to the cafeteria where my kids were waiting. I informed them of who was advancing and who wasn't.
Then I went outside.
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Over the next couple weeks, I would reflect on that day at state. I told my students where we had finished as a team. How close we had come to getting a trophy. How proud I was of them for doing better as a team than anyone else from their school had done before.
As adults, I think we often have trouble separating our work from our identity. Our successes and failures often get wrapped up in our perception of ourselves. I was finding myself looking at the glass as being half empty. We had a team that achieved some awesome things and yet, for a short time, all I could see was an empty trophy case. I felt like I had let my students down. I felt like an overwhelemed, incompetent newbie all over again and that if I could just achieve this one thing, then maybe I would have proven myself worthy to get to work with such awesome kids.
At moments like this, I try to swallow the medicine I have offered to stressed out students time and time again:
This does not define you.
No matter what happens, you are a miracle.
Coaching has made me a better teacher in several ways. I feel more comfortable connecting with students on a level that isn't nearly as superficial as it sometimes felt in my regular English class. I've been able to see students crave more than simply content knowledge from their teachers. They want lessons they can take for life. They want a relationship with a caring adult that is unconditional, a relationship that convinces them that you are going to be in their corner no matter what. But I lost sight of my own growth when I let my identity get wrapped up in it.
And as I got some perspective back, I let it go. My students didn't feel betrayed. They didn't feel disappointed. They were proud of what they had done and proud of each other. My issue was with myself and my own baggage.
Sometimes we all get this way. We all identify something about ourselves and build it up in our minds to the point that we ignore the big picture. We wrap our identities up in our own children and then live vicariously through them. Then, when parenting gets difficult (it's never not difficult) we think of ourselves as bad parents and therefore bad people.
Or we wrap ourselves up in our work. We seek the next big accomplishment, the next step on the ladder to success and when that step doesn't come quickly enough, we view ourselves as failures, or as unwilling to sacrifice enough to make it happen.
Or we wrap ourselves up pursuing relationships. People seek the "love of their life" and when faced with rejection, they think of themselves as somehow unworthy of love. Or maybe as someone who can't "make love work."
And that's ridiculous. It really is. I don't feel ashamed of feeling sad on behalf of my students who wanted to do better (after all, I don't feel ashamed at sharing their joy at doing well) but I do feel ashamed that in my head, I had made the meet about me instead of my students.
Because at the end of the day, it's always about our students. We constantly teach them that their value goes beyond a score on a test or a misspelled word on a paper. But it's important to remember that our own value also goes beyond that, too.
It's a challenge.
But we might just grow from it.
