Earlier this semester, I found myself in a large high school auditorium. Hundreds of middle school and upper elementary school students sat expectantly with their teammates, parents and siblings anxiously waiting further back. A buzz of chatter filled the room, a tangible sense of anticipation in the air.
When the first chord of Also Spracht Zarathustra rang out from the auditorium speakers, the students burst into spontaneous and enthusiastic applause. All eyes were on the front curtain. As the music continued, the curtain slowly rose. The deliberate coordination of music and stagecraft drew the crowd from excited applause to feverish delight. The full exposure of the awards table on the stage was timed perfectly to coincide with the resolving chords of the music, and the auditorium burst into an ear thumping roar.
Hard to believe this level of excitement was for a Speech & Debate awards ceremony.
For the past 3 years, Santa Ana Unified has invested heavily in a Speech & Debate program that is becoming is the envy of the nation. The defending middle school national champs call Santa Ana home. We’ve recruited college level Speech & Debate champions from around the country to come coach our students after school and over the summer. Surrounding schools district have been paying to get in on the tournament scene. Virtually every intermediate and high school has a team, and many of our elementary schools are starting their own teams. Sometimes it seems like there is a competition every weekend, be it a high school regional, a district semi-final, the elementary championships, or an annual trek to Harvard or nationals. We even hosted the National Forensic Association competition back in April, with college students descending on Santa Ana from universities around the country to compete for the national championship.
When I got to Santa Ana 4 years ago, Speech and Debate wasn’t really a thing. We had a handful of small high school teams. The local Kiwanis club approached district leadership with some interest in starting something more robust, and together recruited a local city councilman and educator Sal Tinajero who was coaching an award winning team up in Fullerton. We poached Sal from our neighbors with the expectation of building a strong program in the district. The initial budget was modest but there was an appetite to see the program grow with time.
It didn’t take long.
At first, building the program felt a little dangerous. As can be the case in a large educational bureaucracy at times, there were rules to follow. Sal came into my office on multiple occasions, panic on his face when it seemed an event reservation was going to be bumped, when a check for visiting tournament judges hadn’t been cut, or when we didn’t have a job description for college coaches coming to work with our students. Sal always kept the faith, used some political muscle to elicit support when necessary, and steadily an idea became a full fledged success story. Speech and debate now is part of our district identity.
The rise of Speech & Debate in Santa Ana reminds us all that transformational change can and does happen. It reminds us that the recipe for dynamic opportunities for students requires a potent mix of political, financial, and organizational will power. When those forces come together, transformation really can (and does) happen.