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Episode 253 with Bryan Devonshire

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & welcome!
12:43 – Strategy

Strategy

It’s a 2c/5c NLHE zoom poker game, 6 handed, on Bovada. I have $10.50 in my stack and villain has me covered, so we are at 210 blinds effective.

I am first to act with black QQ. I elect to limp and immediately get raised to 20c by UTG +1. It folds back around to me. I call.

We go to the flop with 47 cents in the pot. Qd Jc 9d. I check, and villain checks back.

Turn is an offsuit Jack, I check Villain bet 33c into 47c, and I raise pot, making it $1.46 to go. He calls.

We go to the river with $3.39 in the pot and about $8.80 in effective stacks. River is the 5 of hearts. I elect to overbet about 1.5x pot, $5.18.

Every person who donates $5 or more gets to ask a question. This is your chance to get any bit of poker-related wisdom you’d like from me, though you’re free to ask about non-poker stuff as well. With the help of some guests (Nate has already volunteered, so feel free to pose questions for him as well), I’m going to create a series of podcasts in which I answer all of your questions and share all of the answers with everyone who donated. So basically, $5 gets you not only the chance to get your poker question answered but exclusive access to the answers to everyone’s poker questions.

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The Bay Area Urban Debate League is a non-profit organization with which I’m deeply involved as a Board member, volunteer, and donor. Debating in high school and college changed my life, and in the 17 years that I’ve been involved with the urban debate movement, I’ve seen it change the lives of hundreds of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. If you enjoy listening to me talk about poker on the Thinking Poker Podcast or in my strategy videos, well, debate is the reason I can think as critically and analyze things as clearly as I can. Please help me extend this opportunity to young people who stand to benefit tremendously from it.

If you’d rather hear a testimonial from a BAUDL debater, check out the video below. “[Debate] made me feel like I was smart, which I didn’t feel before that.”

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I’m currently in Big Bend National Park, which is one of the more remote parts of the continental United States. Not a whole lot of internets down here. I haven’t had the opportunity to gear up for this properly, but Giving Tuesday is approaching, and that means the kickoff for the annual Bay Area Urban Debate League year-end giving campaign.

This is a non-profit organization with which I’m deeply involved as a Board member, volunteer, and donor. Debating in high school and college changed my life, and in the 17 years that I’ve been involved with the urban debate movement, I’ve seen it change the lives of hundreds of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. If you enjoy listening to me talk about poker on the Thinking Poker Podcast or in my strategy videos, well, debate is the reason I can think as critically and analyze things as clearly as I can. Please help me extend this opportunity to young people who stand to benefit tremendously from it.

Donate now!

In the strategy segment, Andrew address tangling with the chipleader and making thin value bets at the final table (or rather, about not doing those things).

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
6:12 – Strategy
25:34 – Josh Nixon

Strategy

Six players remain at a final table. Payouts are:
$4000
$2700
$2000
$1460
$1020
$900

Stacks:
LJ 360K
HJ 273
Hero (CO) 558K
BN 393K
SB 231K
Ian Simpson (BB) 749K

Blinds 4500/9000/1125
Hero opens 22,500 in the CO with Qs 5s.

Flop (56K in pot) Js 4c 5h
BB checks, Hero bets 22,500, BB calls.

Turn (101K in pot) 2c
Both check.

River (101K in pot) 7h
Villain checks. Hero?

For every $1000 raised, I’m releasing an hour of poker strategy content. Plus, every person who donates at least $10 will be entered in a drawing to win great prizes like a custom video, an item from Nitcast.com, or even an appearance on the Thinking Poker Podcast!

Please click here to donate now. Your donations are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated!

The first half of my conversation with Matt is available here.

We created this video as part of a year-end fundraising campaign for the Bay Area Urban Debate League.  To unlock more videos like this one and get a shot at some great prizes, please donate to the campaign now!

Dozens of the best two-person teams from throughout New England competed at the two-day district championship for one of two opportunities to debate at nationals. The other national qualifying team hails from the suburb of Weston, though the first alternates are also from the BDL.

Gena and her brother Ted (I don’t generally use kids’ real names when blogging about them but in this case their names and pictures are already in the news) are the first BDL debaters ever to qualify for nationals. It’s hard to think of a more deserving duo. Gena is one of very few students ever to compete in the BDL for all four years of her high school career, and she’s been winning top honors since her very first tournament, where she was the top speaker in the Novice division. Ted was attending BDL tournaments to cheer on his sister even before he was in high school, and their parents are fixtures at the competitions as well, always offering to help with the demanding task of distributing food to an army of ravenous teenagers.

These two have a ton of natural talent, a lot of support at home, and most importantly an insatiable work ethic. I have no doubt that they’ll make the BDL and the region proud in Indianapolis.

Round 3

Saturday morning proves far more hectic than anticipated. There’s a surprising amount of turnover, meaning students who competed last night but who if they plan on coming at all today have not arrived as of 8AM. Frustratingly, I’m not getting good information from coaches about which of their students have not showed up.

I am used to leading by moral authority. When I ran the BDL, the coaches and students all saw how hard I worked, and most of them knew that I wasn’t paid. I more or less shamed them into making my job easier and doing what I told them to do.

Few coaches and even fewer students remain from my era, and most of the others had never seen me before yesterday. I try to catch up with them as they arrive to confirm which students would be competing today, but I get a lot of eye rolls and brusque “I don’t know, not everyone is here yet,” and despite my pleas to come find me in the tab room if they need to make any changes, no one reports to me despite plenty of changes that should have been made before the start of Round 3.

This results in something like six forfeited debates, with twelve students sitting and twiddling their thumbs for an hour and a half. Had I been on top of the no-shows sooner, I could have reconfigured the pairings so that these six teams debated each other, but instead they all got the morning off. Fine with them, I imagine, but from my perspective a lost educational opportunity. There’s a similar scramble to determine which of our volunteer judges has actually shown up and to replace those who have not.

Round 4

Even once Round 3 gets off the ground, we continue to work in the tab room updating the computer. In the interest of starting at least close to on time, we often made changes and substitutions on the fly, crossing out the names of no-show teams and substituting in judges. Now, to ensure that the computer has accurate information upon which to base the next round’s pairings, we must go through and update the tabulation program with the changes we’ve made by hand.

Round 4 seems to get off to a good start, until several coaches poke their heads into the tab room. Apparently two teams who missed round 3 have since arrived, ready to debate round 4. To be fair, we were told about this, but we failed to update the tabulation program accordingly. Now, as a result of our error (and, of course, the students’ own tardiness) they stand to miss both of today’s preliminary debates. It’s getting late to redo all of our plans for the coming round, so rather than reconfigure the pairings, I pit these teams against each other. One is from the Novice division and one the JV, so it won’t count towards the official results, but at least the kids will get to debate. All parties walk away satisfied.

This kind of quick, creative problem solving is my favorite part of running a tournament. There are constantly little fires like this to put out, and a good director will improvise solutions to all of them while keeping the great tournament machine chugging along smoothly. It requires seeing all of the options at your disposal and understanding the ultimate objectives, which are to run a fair, educational, and fun event. Are you starting to see the similarities with poker?

Consistent with my lead-by-moral-authority philosophy, I comport myself as tournament director with an air of hurried authority. I always walk briskly and purposefully, and if someone wants to come to me with a problem or concern, they better walk and talk and keep up. If I’m hunched over the computer, some try to wait for my full attention, but I let them know they aren’t getting it. I can’t afford to stop working, so tell me about the next problem while I’m solving the current one.

Quarterfinals

There’s a lot to do as Round 4 ends. Heretofore, rounds have been “lag paired”, meaning that in Round 4 teams are paired based on their results from Rounds 1 and 2, enabling us to pair Round 4 while round 3 is underway. Now that we’re about to start the quarterfinals, we need the results of all four preliminary rounds to determine the top eight teams in each division.

Once all the data are in, we have to double-check everything up to this point to ensure that the proper teams advance. A few of our last-minute changes have produced some irregularities in the results, data that weren’t properly recorded. All of this must be verified and fixed before pairing the quarterfinal round.

To buy time for this extra bit of tabulation, we coordinate it with lunch. The kids fuel up on sandwiches and cookies while we pore quickly but thoroughly over the results, snatching bites of our lunch with any free second.

Despite this forty-five-minute hedge, we fall behind schedule preparing the quarterfinals. Eager to make up for lost time, I grab the pairings as soon as they’re printed, run off a few copies, and tape them up strategically around the cafeteria.

A student quickly brings the problem to my attention: “What rooms are these rounds in?” Whoops. I was in such a rush that I neglected to assign rooms to the quarterfinal rounds. Elbert scrambles to scrawl numbers on the pairings and replace the incomplete copies I hung. Approximately sixty-three thousand people interrupt this process to point out that they don’t know which rooms they’re supposed to be in.

Awards Ceremony

Finally the quarterfinals are underway, but there’s no rest for the weary. The next item on the schedule is the awards ceremony (yes, we have the awards ceremony before the semifinal debates – these tournaments run long, and only a few kids need to stay for the last two rounds, so we arrange things so that the vast majority are ready to go by 5 PM), and there’s a lot to do to prepare.

We have awards for not only the losers of the quarterfinals (the winners will get their trophies after semifinals or finals, depending on how far they make it) but also for the top individual speakers, for the schools with the most participating students, and for the best judges. Most of these awards are given in each of the three divisions and announced by a different individual, in the interest of including more people in the ceremony. I need to determine the winners of each of these awards and then distribute this information to the ten different presenters so they’ll have what they need for their part of the ceremony.

We also need a copy of each ballot from the preliminary rounds to distribute to each of the of the teams in each debate. That’s roughly 280 pieces of paper that need to be photocopied, front and back, and then separated into piles for each school.

It’s my own bright idea use BDL alumni in the awards ceremony. I love it when graduates of the BDL come back to serve as judges. In fact, they’re the only judges we pay, a policy that I began and that has lasted into the present day. These alumni often make for the best judges, because as former BDL debaters themselves who are now (mostly) in college, they are uniquely appealing as role models to the current debaters. They are also the judges least able to afford to volunteer. Many work two jobs to help pay for college, and no matter how much they’d like to, most can’t give up their Fridays and Saturdays for free.

Anyway, I asked some of these alumni to participate in the awards ceremony. The ceremony takes place in a large auditorium, and it turns out we have no microphone. The alumni, less experienced with speaking to large groups than am I, struggle on a number of levels. They speak far too quietly and quickly, and they don’t engage at all with the audience. This results in students only half paying attention to the awards and a lot of whispering and noise from the audience.

When it’s my turn to and announce the results of the Novice quarterfinals, I take the time to get everyone’s attention. “Are you ready to hear who won some debates?” Muttered yesses and grunts. “If you’re ready to hear who won the debates, say yay-ah!” Now I’ve got some kids shouting back at me. I raise my voice and enthusiasm. “If you’re ready to hear who won the debates, stomp your feet!” This time there’s a chorus of stomps. “If you’re ready to hear who won the debates… shut up and stop talking so I can tell you.” Gales of laugher, and I know I’ve got them.

I draw out the announcements for full dramatic effect. “In the debate between X from school Y and A from school B, the winner is X. Team A, please come up to collect your trophies.” Repeat for the other three quarterfinal rounds. With each name announced, there’s uproarious cheering from one part of the room and groans from another.

Immediately after I announce the last of the results, one of the alumni judges rushes the stage. “Andrew! Andrew!” I lean over to talk to him. “You got that one wrong. You said the wrong team.” My stomach falls. He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t sure, but I ask him anyway. “Yes I’m certain, I judged it myself. That’s the team I voted for,” he says, pointing to the girls currently on stage collecting quarterfinalist trophies.

“Stay on stage a moment, ladies,” I tell them. They freeze, confused. “Let’s bring the other team up here as well.” Two boys in the front row, grinning from ear to ear, collect a few high fives as they come up on stage. “Guys, I’m really sorry, I just made a huge mistake. The other team are actually the winners.” The girls shriek with delight, while the boy’s teammates howl with laughter and point.

The boys, to their tremendous credit, take it like champs. They shake my hand and accept my sincere apologies gracefully. They hug their opponents as they take the quarterfinalist trophies. I’m embarrassed, but it could have been much worse if the judge hadn’t caught my error. The wrong team advancing to the semifinals would have been a disaster that couldn’t be undone.

Semifinals

Now, at last, the hard part is over. There’s a bit of a scramble to find judges for the semifinals, since it’s getting late and many volunteers are going home, but the time pressure is off. A good 70% of the students and coaches will leave now, and the atmosphere will be much more relaxed. It’s almost anticlimactic the way things quiet down even as the most important debates take place. It’s actually reminiscent of the atmosphere last days of the WSOP main event (thinly veiled brag), with most of the fanfare has wrapped up even though the stakes are the highest.

These kids don’t leave a lot of food behind, but lucky for me the vegetarian sandwiches are the least popular. I finally have time to get a meal and chat with the other volunteers. Much like many of our debaters, Elbert grew up in a poor family and joined the debate team at a high school that was otherwise rather lackluster, academically. He credits debate with opening his eyes to the world and getting him into college. He now works for the Federal Reserve combating fraud in military meal cards.

Finals

There are only six semifinal debates, so tabulating those results and pairing the three final rounds (one in each division) is a breeze. I decide to finally watch a bit of one of these debates I’ve been scheduling all day, so I sit in on the beginning of the Varsity finals.

It’s not a coincidence that two of the three students in the whole tournament whom I know are debating in this round. They are a brother and sister team, she a senior and he a junior, with a combined seven years of debate experience between them. They are also the only two white students at a high school in Roxbury, Boston’s historically black neighborhood where Malcolm X once lived. I don’t know their whole story or how they ended up there, but I have feeling that this experience has a lot to do with their facility for arguing.

“Tom” speaks first, delivering an eight-minute speech in favor of reviving the US space shuttle program. Apparently this is essential to secure US hegemony and eventually colonize space, ensuring the survival of the human race even in the event of catastrophe here on earth.

If you’ve never seen competitive policy debate, you have no idea how much can be said in eight minutes. Tom is nowhere near the fastest, but he is nevertheless spitting out more than two hundred words per minute. Contrary to popular opinion, policy debate is not about public speaking. It’s about logic, evidence, and refutation, and there’s strong incentive to make as many arguments as possible in your allotted time.

The Negative team, two African-American girls from a high school in South Boston, does not look familiar to me, but they know their stuff. “Melissa” calls into question the ideology of colonization. According to her, the very idea is premised on notions of European superiority and entitlement to rule the entire world, dangerous ideas that ought not be extended into space. She also talks about budget cuts that funding the Affirmative’s plan might entail, but it’s evident that the critique of colonialism is the real meat of her team’s strategy.

The other two girls deliver their speeches, clashing over the meaning of colonialism and its importance relative to the threat of human extinction. These are strong speeches, but nothing remarkable.

It is Melissa who blows me away the next time she takes the “podium”, which is really just a chair stacked on top of a desk. Her team’s colonialism argument, though interesting, rests on some pretty complicated philosophical foundations. It’s a topic I’ve rarely seen argued well by college debaters, let alone by students at a high school that struggles to meet state literacy standards.

Yet Melissa knows what she’s talking about. She quotes William Spanos applying Foucault’s critique of disciplinary power to US foreign policy. She explains, clearly and in her own words, the parallels between the bloody European conquest of Africa, Asia, and the Americas and the Affirmative’s proposed colonization of space. It’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever seen in a BDL debate, and though I leave before the final three speeches, I have a sneaking suspicion that the round is over.

I head back down to the tab room to await the results of the Novice and JV finals. The less experienced debaters tend to finish their rounds more quickly, and sure enough they are waiting eagerly in the cafeteria for their results when the Varsity students finally finish.

An impressive number of debaters have stuck around. In addition to the twelve who were still competing in the finals, roughly twice that many friends and teammates remained to watch, learn, and cheer them on. The debate I watched was packed with spectators eager to learn from two of the best teams in the League at the top of their game.

Conversation drops off quickly when I walk purposefully to the front of the cafeteria. I announce the names of both teams who competed in the Novice finals and have them come stand next to me. They are all new to the activity, and while of course it’s exciting to be doing well, winning isn’t something they’ve dreamed of and worked at for months or years. A panel of three judges decided unanimously for the Negative, who cheer and hug each other as I distribute trophies.

Next I stand the JV finalists on either side of me. Once again, it’s a 3-0 decision for the Negative. The cheering is a little louder this time, and the disappointment of the Affirmative team more evident.

Things get really tense when I call up the Varsity debaters. “In the debate between New Mission High School and Excel High School,” I begin. You could hear a pin drop. Melissa is shaking nervously. I know that the brother and sister team have won tournaments before, but for all I know this could be a first for Melissa and her partner. I shuffle the three ballots in my hand. “Let’s see, here’s one ballot for the Negative.” Melissa starts squirming even more.

“Aaaand, oop, here’s one for the Affirmative!” I say with mock surprise, as though I haven’t already looked to see who won. The audience picks up on what I’m doing to the poor debaters and laughs knowingly. “So I guess this final ballot will decide it.” I pause and smile, to more laughter from the audience and almost uncontrollable shaking from Melissa and her partner. “The final judge voted Negative, meaning…” but the rest of my words are drowned out by squeals and shrieks as the two girls embrace.

Tom and his sister smile politely. They’re disappointed, but they’re one of the best teams in the League, and they know they’ll be back. They hug and congratulate their opponents as I thank everyone for coming and wish them luck in the next debate. A few of the coaches, on the way out, thank me for keeping things running smoothly. “Glad to be of help,” I tell them.

I reported back in June that for the first time ever an Urban Debate League team won the National Forensics League Grand Tournament, the largest of three high school debate national championship events. The Chicago Debate League, with the help of the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues, was able to parlay that into an opportunity to meet the president and other notable lawmakers, many of them former debaters themselves! Pictured here are the championship team of Misael Gonzalez and Kevin Hirn, flanking the president, plus the other two top speakers at the Chase Urban Debate National Championship and several urban debate leaders from around the country. Brag: the men at either end of the group are both on my WSOP e-mail list, meaning that they are early readers of the material that becomes my 2+2 Magazine trip reports.

Not that I can take any credit for this victory, but I worked with the CDL for several years while I was in college. In fact, it was a formative experience that led to my starting up the BDL when I moved to Boston. Even absent that personal history, I’d have to say that this is a very impressive accomplishment that hopefully will pave the way for more UDL success on the traditional debate circuit in the future.

Pictures and press release available here.

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who donated to the Boston Debate League. I promise I’m not about to turn this into a “pledge drive” blog, but it was a unique opportunity, and I appreciate your patience and your generosity.

At least one commenter mentioned frustration with the donation site’s request for personal information. That was the site we had to use for the “March for Goodness” competition, but you are always welcome to make donations by PayPay, credit card, or check through the Boston Debate League website. It will no longer count towards the contest, but it will still go towards a very good cause and make me very happy!

Please donate here, right now!

I’ve got another story for you today about the power of debate, this one actually from a similar organization that I worked with in Chicago before I founded the Boston Debate League. I was a junior at the University of Chicago: white, reasonably well-off, over-educated, and sheltered. I grew up in a solidly white, middle-class suburb of Baltimore and, aside from a few summers working at a 7-11 and a year of volunteering in the Chicago Debate League, I had very little experience interacting with people from backgrounds different than my own.

I’d just gotten a job as an assistant coach in the CDL and had been assigned to Orr Academy, an under-performing (to put it mildly) high school in Chicago’s Harlem. As the name suggests, the neighborhood was virtually all black (the only white person I ever saw on the streets there was selling pornographic DVD’s out of a briefcase) and economically depressed.

At the first competition of the year, the director of the CDL introduced me to the head coach at Orr. I assumed that he would in turn introduce me to the students, but actually the first thing he told me was that he had to go and that I should “keep an eye on” the team for the rest of the day. He gestured vaguely towards the cafeteria table where they were all gathered and then headed out the door.

They were an intimidating bunch, mostly young men dressed in “urban attire”. I would most definitely cross the street, or more likely find another street altogether, if I were to come upon that same group standing on a corner at night. It was hard for me to imagine them taking my geeky white ass seriously, but I took a deep breath and tried to look confident as I walked towards them.

Seeing me approach, by far the largest of the young men stood up from the table and turned towards me. No exaggeration, this guy was 6’5 and I wouldn’t be surprised if he tipped the scales at 350 pounds. I met his gaze and held it until his round face finally burst into a wide smile. “You must be Mr. Brokos!” He shook my hand vigorously and introduced himself as Tarell. Then, draping an arm effortlessly over my shoulder, he took me around the table and introduced me one-by-one of the other members of the team, who all greeted me quite warmly.

I started visiting their school once a week, which entailed a one-hour ride on the Green line in each direction. It truly felt like stepping into a different world when I boarded the train in Hyde Park, the gentrified bubble that is home to the U of C, and disembarked an hour later amidst Harlem’s boarded-up windows and discarded syringes. Needless to say, I stuck out like a sore thumb walking from the train station to the school, and I never felt entirely comfortable.

As soon I stepped into the head coach’s classroom, though, I always got a warm greeting from Tarell, and his welcoming smile immediately put me at ease. He made small talk effortlessly, told me about the school and asked me what I’d been up to. Tarell was never a particularly good debater, but he was more dedicated to the activity than anyone else on the team. He was at every practice, and he always gave me an update on who would be coming that day, who would be late, who had to leave early, etc. During any group discussion, he was the most vocal, quick with a joke, but always encouraged others to participate as well. His easy confidence gave them the confidence to speak up, just as it had put me at ease back when we first met.

I never had any problems walking to the school, except once with a police officer who hassled me for a while, presumably because I thought he was there to buy drugs (in his defense, that probably is why the vast majority of white people walking the streets of Harlem are there). Once when I got to the school, though, there were far more students hanging around out front than usual. I had a bad feeling about the situation, but I’d already traveled an hour to get here, so I took a deep breath and tried to talk quickly through their midst towards the front door of the school, which was about 200 feet away.

Suddenly, a boy about 15-years old jumped out in front of me, stomping the ground loudly with his heavy boots. I jumped a bit and put my hands up defensively, and several of his friends laughed. He didn’t say anything, but he stared me straight in the eyes. When I tried to step around him to the right, he side-stepped as well to stay in front of me. I stepped to the left, but same thing. I tried to smile disarmingly and say, “Excuse me, my friend”, but he just stared back with angry eyes.

I don’t know what this guy was up to or what if anything would have happened next, but suddenly I saw Tarell walk out the front door of the school. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anyone. He stepped around the bully and put that familiar arm around my shoulder. “Come on, Mr. Brokos, everybody’s waiting for you inside.” The other boy disappeared into the crowd, and we walked into the school. “There’s going to be a big fight today. I thought maybe I should wait for you down here,” Tarell explained.

“Thanks,” I murmured, still shaken and a little embarrassed at having to be rescued by one of my students.

“Tarell sure seems like a natural for debate,” I commented to the head coach one day. “He’s so confident and outgoing.”

The coach smiled with amusement. “That’s Tarell after a year on the debate team. He used to be the shyest kid in class, always very sensitive about his weight. He always sat in the back of the room and wouldn’t say anything to anybody. Debate gave him that confidence to speak up.”

I don’t know what would have happened to Tarell if he hadn’t had the opportunity to debate, and frankly I don’t know where he is now either. I doubt that he’s a millionaire, but I know that he went to college, and I’m sure he’s a lot better off than he would have been without debate. It’s an activity that changes lives, particularly for young people like Tarell who have so few opportunities available to them at their schools. He wasn’t a genius, but he was a good person, a kind person, a caring and thoughtful person, and he deserved the opportunity to find his voice.

Please donate today.

I want to share with you the story of one of the first BDL students to really make an impression on me. “Angela’s” school didn’t join the League until her senior year, so she only had one year to compete, but she really tore it up. She steamrolled the Novice division in her first tournament, won first prize, and immediately moved up into the Varsity division. She won two tournaments in the Varsity division that year and ended up taking second place in the City Championships.

As you might imagine, Angela was an extremely mature, bright, and articulate young woman. To this day, I consider her one the smartest people (not just high school students) I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. My first introduction to her actually came via an extremely professional voicemail message I got when calling to remind her about a summer camp she’d signed up for. The message explained that Angela would be out of the office this week and could be reached on her cellular phone. It sounded like I’d reached a professional businesswoman, not a teenage girl. When I asked her about this, Angela explained that she had a summer job at the Federal Reserve Bank.

At some point, I commented to one of Angela’s teachers that she seemed so bright and together and could probably write her ticket to pretty much any college that she wanted. The woman gave me a concerned look and said, “She’ll be lucky if she graduates high school.”

It turns out Angela just didn’t do homework and was in danger of failing several classes. I never got the full story, but apparently she was dealing with some serious problems at home and lacked either the time, the energy, or the inclination to do homework.

I’ve worked with thousands of students from urban public schools. While I rarely get to know them well enough to learn their individual stories, I’m well aware that a lot of them are likely to have problems with poverty, abuse, violence, drugs, the law, etc. Sometimes it’s obvious, and other times I can’t help but speculate, but Angela was someone I never would have expected. In retrospect, I suppose it makes sense that having so many burdens to bear at such a young age contributed to her precocious maturity, but she’d just always seemed so together to me.

She did graduate high school, but I lost touch with her for several years. About a year ago, quite out of the blue, she sent me an e-mail thanking me for the opportunities that the Boston Debate League provided for her. She told me she was finishing up college at the University of Massachusetts and attributed that fact, together with her having graduated high school at all, to her school’s debate team. She was also working as a community organizer and motivational speaker, which again she felt was made possible by the confidence and speaking skills that she learned through debate. It was very rewarding for me to hear that not only had she gotten her own life on track but that she was using the skills she’d acquired through debate to help many more young people.

I wrote back asking if there were any opportunities for me to see her speak, but I never heard from her again. I can’t tell you how uncommon it is for me to hear anything from the students I work with after they graduate, but for a number of reasons, I’m not surprised that Angela was the rare one to reach me.

With a donation as small as $10, you can help to change more young lives. Please do your part!

The BDL also got its first mention, and a fairly substantial one at that, in the Boston Globe, the city’s most prominent daily paper. The reporter did a nice job speaking with a variety of students, coaches, and administrators, and ultimately presented two of our most important themes: that debate is a rigorous academic activity that students nonetheless enjoy, and that it attracts all types of students, not only those who are already high achievers.

The credit for this goes to my girlfriend, who diligently reached out to nearly one hundred contacts at a wide variety of news outlets. Thanks, Em!

The debate team at the Academy of Public Service sailed into the “elite eight” last year at the national championships in Chicago.

Now, thanks to that oratorical success, the debaters have talked their way into another year of funding as their school merges with the nearby Noonan Business Academy in Codman Square.

“The output of the debate team was a big part of the decision,” said team coach Locksley Bryan. “They saw these kids doing academic calisthenics at a very high level and it impressed them.”

The backstory, as I understand it, is that several years ago the Boston Public Schools received a multi-year, multi-million-dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support a transition to small schools. The grant funded the dissolution of Boston’s large public high schools into multiple small schools sharing a single building. Thus, what was Dorchester High School became three schools within the renamed Dorchester Education Complex: Tech Boston, Noonan Business Academy, and the Academy of Public Service (APS).

Dorchester is one of the more troubled neighborhoods in Boston, and these schools had more than their share of problems. APS, however, was fortunate enough to have a wonderful headmaster and several great teachers who saw the value that a debate team could have for their students and their school. They got in touch with me, and I helped them start such a program three years ago.

Thanks to the efforts of the aforementioned faculty, APS quickly became one of the most successful schools in the League, putting up some of the best participation numbers and repeatedly taking top honors at citywide competitions. This was a big deal for a school that used to be known derogatorily among Boston’s young people as “Dumbchester”.

The Gates grant expires at the end of the current school year, and BPS seems to be reconsolidating some (though not nearly all) of the small schools it created. APS was slated to be absorbed by the more popular Tech Boston and its students dispersed. However, teachers, faculty, students, alumni, and community members rallied in support of their school. As the most eloquent orators, several of the debaters took leadership roles in this effort, speaking before the Boston Schools Committee about the value of the Academy of Public Service. The debate team was one of the flagship programs to which they pointed as evidence of the school’s success.

As an organization, we’ve learned a lot from this event. We’ve come to appreciate more fully how much a debate team can transform a school culture, ultimately affecting even non-debaters in a positive way. When intellectual competition takes on the fun, excitement, credibility, and even popularity of a sports team at a school, that school is bound to improve. Joining the debate team becomes a cool, or at least socially acceptable, thing to do, and more kids get into it. These students, and the teachers who coach them, bring their newly acquired skills into their classrooms, raising the quality of the class for all its students.

An alumnus of the APS debate team who now volunteers as a judge at our competitions put it best when he told me, “If they had said three years ago that they wanted to close APS, I wouldn’t have argued with them. It was a bad school. But it changed when the debate team came along. Debate turned around a lot of kids lives. Kids who were going to drop out started coming to school again so they could debate. It’s a much better school now and I don’t think they should close it.”

Here’s another random brag, this one from the Stars weekly $500. Sorry was having trouble with the converter, basically I had an open-ended draw on the turn and overbet shoved when a flush card came on the river:

PokerStars Game #21709641365: Tournament #116152197, $500+$30 Hold’em No Limit – Level III (100/200) – 2008/11/02 18:23:05 ET
Table ‘116152197 23’ 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: nofingclue11 (11900 in chips)
Seat 2: tiger76 (9370 in chips)
Seat 3: jesseluke82 (5480 in chips)
Seat 4: berra86 (13699 in chips)
Seat 5: lowlife039 (13250 in chips)
Seat 6: Mia_121 (9276 in chips)
Seat 7: Joao M. (10835 in chips)
Seat 8: foucault82 (8390 in chips)
Seat 9: Psychout (8600 in chips)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to foucault82 [Tc 9s]
nofingclue11: folds
tiger76: folds
jesseluke82: folds
berra86: folds
lowlife039: folds
Mia_121: folds
Joao M.: folds
foucault82: calls 100
Psychout: checks

*** FLOP *** [Qc 8s 7c]
foucault82: bets 299
Psychout: calls 299

*** TURN *** [Qc 8s 7c] [5d]
foucault82: bets 666
Psychout: raises 666 to 1332
foucault82: calls 666

*** RIVER *** [Qc 8s 7c 5d] [2c]
foucault82: bets 6559 and is all-in
Psychout: folds
Uncalled bet (6559) returned to foucault82
foucault82 collected 3662 from pot
foucault82: doesn’t show hand

He pretty much can’t have a flush because he’s not min-raising a flush draw on the turn. It just doesn’t make sense to minimize his fold equity and re-open the betting, giving me the opportunity to blow him off his draw. So it’s a great bluffing opportunity when the flush comes in. The only problem is that people are stubborn, especially when they have pretty hands (which the min-raise suggests he does), so I made the only bet that I thought I could force a tough lay down. I expected it to work damn near 100% of the time, though, which is why I found it interesting.

I must admit, though, that spending five hours a day, five days a week in charge of a bunch of teenagers is more than a little exhausting. Even though we had a great group that was for the most part eager to learn about debate and easy to get along with, it was still a lot of work and pretty draining. I was in no mood to play poker at the end of a day, that’s for sure.

Here’s me taking notes on the board during a short debate two of our students had about the morality of eating meat.

Poker-wise, I ended the month almost exactly dead even after rakeback. I guess that’s not too bad given that my several forays into 25-50 resulted in several bad beats to the tune of five figures. I did make more of an effort to learn PLO, watching the PLO Leakfinder series on Cardrunners and the PLO guest series that Tom Chambers did for Poker Savvy Plus. I put in several sessions at 2/4, and even though I was a net loser, I feel like I am getting much better at reading hands and board textures.

The World Championship of Online Poker starts today, but I probably won’t begin playing in earnest until next week, so that’s when you can expect to see more regular posts. Sorry for the extended silence.

Granted I’m about to turn around and spend all of June’s winnings in Las Vegas, but I was going to play the main event anyway, so the winnings are still very meaningful. And if you count staking profits, June turns into a damn fine month.

I was playing smaller stakes, though deep-stacked, and ran at about 4 BB/100 over 19K hands.

Non-poker stuff, which is where I devoted a lot of my time, is going great as well. The school system is really excited about the debate league and committed to investing in it, and we’re very close to hiring an extremely qualified new director. I wish I had a bit more time for poker, but as I said, the first part of July will be dedicated to it, and once there’s a paid employee working on the debate stuff, I should have more free time as well.

I’m very excited that after months of meetings, the superintendent and her staff have agreed to invest $50,000 in the League. This is actually less than I was hoping, but it’s still a huge improvement from nothing and will hopefully get us a foot in the door. Everyone I’ve met in the administration has seemed genuinely taken with the program. Now we’ll have access to data such as debaters’ GPA and test scores (this will be part of our deal with BPS), the numbers will back up our claims about how participation in debate can improve confidence, academic achievement, critical thinking, literacy, etc. It seems very plausible to me that there could be debate teams in every high school in the city, and maybe middle schools as well, within ten years.

It’s kind of sad that I’ll probably be leaving Boston just as this thing really takes off. I’ll still be involved as a member of the Board, but we’re hiring a full time person to direct the League.

This afternoon, I attended an end-of-the-year banquet and awards ceremony for one of my debate teams. In addition to awards for all the debaters, they had one for me in honor of my last year as director. Though it was technically from the whole team, I know that the coach and one student in particular were behind it. These two are respectively among the most extraordinary of the dozens of teachers and hundreds of students I’ve worked with in my seven years in the urban debate field, and their respect means the world to me.

Here’s the trophy, which I’m sure will become one of my most cherished possessions:

Actually the aforementioned student just found this blog recently. When she saw me today, the first thing she said was, “Hey I googled your name.”

Uh oh, I know where this is going. “Yeah?”

“I didn’t know about all that poker stuff.”

“Yeah I don’t really make a big deal about it at work.”

“That’s pretty neat. So you are like a beginner?”

“Uh, I didn’t say that. Where’d you get that from?”

“Some article from the Baltimore Sun said it was like your second time or you made money for the second time or something.”

“Yeah, my second time making money… at the world championships.”

“Oh. That’s pretty good.”

And a close-up of the engraving:

Sean was one of the best speakers I’ve seen, and I’ve seen thousands. When Sean won top speaker at the tournament, I was not surprised. When a reporter from the Kansas City Star called me about an article he was writing on Sean, I was not surprised. (Well, I wasn’t surprised that a reporter would do want to write an article about Sean. I was surprised that he had bothered to track down Sean’s judges from the national championship).

I had trouble putting into words what exactly it was that I liked about Sean, which is rare for me, but the reporter did a nice job of turning my rambling into a coherent thought:

Thirty-four teams from 19 debate leagues across the nation battled it out in Chicago last weekend at the Chase Urban Debate National Championship. [Sean] earned a $2,500 scholarship for snaring the top individual award.

And he did it while attacking some of the hectic, rapid-fire tactics of debate even as he showed he could dominate that style, said judge Andrew Brokos.

“He was charismatic and principled,” Brokos said. “He had all the skills … to play within the game while getting the judges to acknowledge his criticism of the game.”

Judging Sean was also exciting for me because he debates for Kansas City Central, the debate team that was the subject of one of my favorite books, Cross-Ex. Even if I weren’t deeply immersed in the world of urban debate leagues, I would have loved this white journalist’s account of following, and eventually coaching, the largely black team as they “challenge[d] the debate community on race, power, and education.”

Jane Rinehart, who coaches at Central and was one of the “stars” of the book, has apparently taken Sean into her home as well and is now his legal guardian. The article is pretty vague regarding what happened, but it sounds like his family just up and took off on him while he was away at a debate tournament:

That’s how, at 17, you bear the weight of having walked up the steps to your home after returning from another out-of-town tournament and finding the window blinds gone, the furniture gone…

This is my favorite thing about the urban debate league scene, and what makes it so different from poker. Virtually everyone I meet, both students and coaches/administrators, are extraordinary and inspiring people who have done, are doing, or surely will do great things. It’s incredibly uplifting to spend time in their company. Compare that to the usual lineup at a 2/5 NL table at Foxwoods, and you’ll understand why I don’t enjoy live poker.

Mayor Cicilline spoke briefly but eloquently about the importance of debate and the history of the Rhode Island Urban Debate League. Though he’s new to office, he seems to have had a long-standing relationship with the League. To say that I’m jealous would be an understatement.

Then, a young woman named Rosanna Castro gave awards and introduced the RIUDL’s graduating seniors. Rosanna was one of the League’s first debaters, and since graduating in 2004, she has gone on to join the school board. We’ve got some strong allies on the Boston School Committee, but once again, jealousy ensued as I listened to this bright, articulate, confident young woman credit so much of her success to debate.

The seniors had similar stories to tell. The Boston Debate League did two joint events with the RIUDL this year, so I’ve gotten to know some of their students a bit. It was moving to watch them pondering such an emotional milestone as graduation and reflecting on an activity that has meant so much to them. Some read from carefully prepared speeches, others reveled in hamming it up on the fly, and still others giggled nervously through quick thank yous to their coaches and teammates. But always, they acknowledged that were it not for joining the debate team, they would never be able to speak so eloquently before a crowd of hundreds.

The real show-stopper was Nate Parker, who starred alongside Denzel Washington in The Great Debaters. Now this was a guy to be jealous of. Nate is young, handsome, charismatic, smart, articulate, well-informed, successful, and presumably pretty well-off financially these days.
Experiencing so much success as a young man and being tapped by one of the most popular and talented actors and directors in America to star in his film is the kind of thing that would go to most people’s heads, especially those who spend so much time in Hollywood. But Nate seems down-to-Earth and genuinely passionate about debate. Though he was unfamiliar with the activity prior to starring in the film, Parker now describes debate as “a major step in leveling the playing field” for disadvantaged students. He’s since traveled the country to attend several other urban debate events.

Needless to say, he’s a big hit with the students. After speaking for a few minutes, he invited the audience to come up on stage and ask him questions. Not surprisingly, several giggling girls were the first to take him up on the offer.

When asked about the upcoming presidential election, he gave a characteristically thoughtful response. “I really wanted to approach this with an open mind. I didn’t, you know, want to just say ‘Oh I’m for the black guy!’ I’ve read all the candidates’ books and I’ve never missed one of the debates. But after taking it all in, I’m supporting Obama.” That line was met with thunderous applause.

I’m usually skeptical of celebrities who want to pontificate about politics, and this country certainly doesn’t have the best track record with actors-turned-politicians. But I couldn’t help thinking what a great candidate and great leader Parker would make.

“Research shows that participation in organized debate leagues improves literacy scores by 25% and grade point averages by 8%-10%. And while many urban debaters come from schools where most students do not go to college or receive a high school diploma, almost 100% of urban debaters graduate from high school and more than three-quarters go to college.

My own career is a testament to the benefits of debate. I grew up in a working-class family on the south side of Chicago. Neither of my parents attended college. During my first week of high school in September 1967, I wandered into the initial meeting of the debate team. It captured my interest and for the next eight years, all four years of both high school and college, interscholastic debate was at the center of my education and my life.”

A local radio station, WJMN 94.5, is also going to air an interview with a few of our debaters and me between 7 and 8 PM tonight.

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

BTN: 5,060
SB: 4,970
BB: 5,000
UTG: 5,000
UTG+1: 5,000
UTG+2: 4,970
MP1: 5,000
MP2: 5,000
Hero (CO): 5,000

Pre-Flop: (45) K J dealt to Hero (CO)
4 folds, MP2 raises to 90, Hero raises to 315, BTN folds, MP2 calls 225

Flop: (675) T 3 8 (2 Players)
MP2 checks, Hero bets 385, MP2 folds

Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter

BTN: 5,015
SB: 5,435
BB: 4,955
UTG: 5,000
UTG+1: 4,475
UTG+2: 4,910
MP1: 5,030
MP2: 4,975
Hero (CO): 5,205

Pre-Flop: (45) J A dealt to Hero (CO)
4 folds, MP2 raises to 105, Hero raises to 355, 2 folds, BB calls 325, MP2 calls 250

Flop: (1,080) 5 7 A (3 Players)
BB checks, MP2 checks, Hero bets 550, BB folds, MP2 calls 550

Turn: (2,180) 8 (2 Players)
MP2 checks, Hero checks

River: (2,180) 5 (2 Players)
MP2 bets 1,470, Hero folds

This was a kind of big laydown, but there were no missed draws, so either my opponent was floating me out of position, or he was betting for value, and most of his Aces are better than mine.

Card dead again for a while after this, won a big pot with a set, stole some blinds, won another key coin flip, then lost AT to JJ with about 25 BB’s in a blind battle and that was it.

There is such a hectic energy that surrounds these events, particularly the first one of the year, when there are so many kids who are trying debate out for the first time. Some are driven by their fear to arrive early and pace nervously outside of the school until I arrive to let them in. Others panic and can only be coaxed into coming by coaches and teammates who spend the arrival/breakfast hour furiously calling and texting their no-shows.

These coaches, veteran and novice alike, scramble to marshal their squads for the season opener. They have registered their students with me several days ago in teams of two, but I’ve learned to prepare for a barrage of 11th hour changes:

“Shanice isn’t coming, drop her and pair Marcus with Beni. Tarell can debate alone.”

“Chanelle and Kiki are having a spate; we need to split them up. Pair Chanelle with Dan and Kiki with Jemal.”

“I have a student who’s never been to a practice, but he’s here now and wants to debate. He’s not registered. Is that OK? Can we find him a partner from a different school?”

“Shanice is here, let’s put her back with Marcus, then Beni and Tarell will debate together after all.”

It takes me three drafts of the schedule for Round 1 to get everything straight. Almost half the teams in the Novice division are from the same school, meaning that they can not debate against each other, and my computer program has difficulty generating a schedule that meets this constraint. Meanwhile, there are only four teams in the Varsity division, and although two of them are from the same school, there is no way around pairing them against each other for one of the three rounds. But computers are not given to such compromises, and ultimately it becomes easier to print the closest approximation that the program can give me and then correct it by hand.

All of this logistical work occurs amidst a blur of commotion: stomping feet, pounding music, beeping timers, and the din of young voices echoing through the vast hallways of this big brick schoolhouse. I puzzle over the constantly shifting matrix of school names and student initials, all the while incorporating last minute changes, pointing late arrivals vaguely in the direction of the auditorium, where donuts and coffee await them, and fending off unimportant inquiries and requests to “hurry, the students are getting restless.” It is as demanding as playing eight tables of poker at once, and I love every second of it.

Finally, I’m ready to photocopy and distribute the pairings just ten minutes behind schedule. Only a few people notice that I’ve entered the auditorium and ascended the wooden stairs to the podium at center stage, but they quickly start a chorus of shushing the spreads quickly across the disparate huddles of well-dressed teenagers.

“Good morning, everyone. Thanks for your patience. The veterans among you know that it wouldn’t be a BDL tournament without some hectic activity in the morning. But you also know that we usually make up that time over the course of the day and finish ahead of schedule, because I’m just that good.” Usually my faux arrogance is a good for laughs or even a few cheers, but this crowd is anxious to get started. I skip my introductions and get right to business, making a few announcements and then handing out the pairings and the judge’s ballots.

A mob of people, coaches and students alike, converge on the pile of paper at the front of the auditorium. Papers are shuffled, sheets passed back and forth between friends and strangers alike, and everyone is scrambling to gather her things and get to her assigned room. It is now 9:45, and I have told them to start their debates at 9:30.

By 9:50, the auditorium is empty, save for a few coats, backpacks, and crumpled Dunkin’ Donuts boxes. Season Four is officially underway.

When I arrived at Payton High School on Monday morning, however, I found somewhat fewer students than that. There were only 50-60 in attendance that day, and therefore a glut of instructors. The institute director had nothing for Dave (director of the LA Urban Debate League, also in town for the CDSI) and me to do until the afternoon, so we sat in on one of the lectures the students were watching. It was not a good sign that with such a low student:teacher ratio, there were still so many lectures going on. It’s just the worst way for students to learn, especially at a summer camp that is also supposed to be fun and exciting, and with so many spare instructors available, I would have much preferred to see more small group work.

In fact, when I offered to come out to Chicago, I specifically requested some time to work with smaller groups of students, because in the past I’ve been assigned mostly lectures when I visit, and those are just much less fun and rewarding. So after a morning that could have been spent in bed, I had a lecture in the afternoon, and then for the next few days I was to be working with first-year coaches. Sigh. Well that beats lecturing, and ultimately I’m willing to do whatever is needed.

Unfortunately, my new coaches class consists of just two people. They were both cool, very interested in learning about debate and participating a good deal, which is important with such a small group, but I still did not feel as though it was worth a week of my time to fly out to Chicago just to work with two coaches.

The CDSI was only about half of my incentive for coming to Chicago, though. I also wanted to spend some time with Dave, whom I only get to see once or twice a year at these urban debate league events. We first met at a summer debate institute at Howard University a few years ago, and we, along with a woman named Tracy, had such a good time that the three of us continued to meet up at debate camps each summer. Right now, though, Tracy is in South Africa, so it’s just Dave and me.

Truthfully, although I like Dave a lot, we don’t have many common interests beyond debate and our similar positions in our respective urban debate leagues. Dave teaches high school, coaches football, and has a brilliant five-year-old daughter named Saida. I live alone, play poker on the internet, and read Harry Potter in French. But like me, he’s very laid back (Long Beach style, he calls it), and happy just to hang out, talk, and watch TV or nurse beers quietly at a bar.

And I really love listening to him talk about his daughter. I really don’t think I’ve ever seen a more adoring parent, and yet it isn’t creepy the way some parents are who just won’t shut up about their kids. But once he gets going, the love and fascination Dave has for Saida takes over, and it is touching to watch.

Saida was not yet into her Terrible Twos when I first met Dave, and already he was bragging about how smart she was. I initially thought he was exaggerating because that’s what proud fathers do, but I met her for the first and only time last summer, when she was four, and every word he said was true. This child spoke in long, complicated sentences, loved reading, and was fiercely independent.

Other parents from Saida’s school sometimes ask what he and his wife do with Saida to make her so smart. Read to her? Feed her only fruits and vegetables? Forbid her from watching television? He can’t explain it, and, considering himself far from a genius, accepts no credit for passing on good genes. We agreed he should start making up crazy rituals to try to convince these other parents to bathe their children in orange juice or never let them near a microwave or whatever else he can think up.

Last night we sat in our room watching a tremendous thunder storm that had taken out our satellite TV and our internet connection. “Anytime I had to make a wish when I was little,” I told him, “like if I was blowing out birthday candles or throwing a penny in a fountain or whatever, I always wished to control the weather. I don’t know why, but at the time, I didn’t want money or toys or whatever, I just wanted to make it rain.”

He laughed self-consciously. “I always wanted to be a millionaire. I know that’s shallow, but I’ve always just wanted money. I feel like now, if Nandi and I can just work the rest of our lives and build up a nice little estate to pass on to Saida, she could really make something happen. I mean, the girl just needs some capital, and she’ll change the world. And that’s all I need to do, just leave her some money, let her do her thing, and exit stage left.”

There were 10-12 kids in attendance on any given day and a few coaches as well. I was particularly surprised by the latter, because the coaches are all public high school teachers who already do way too much work for not enough money. Far be it from me to pressure them into giving up a week of their summers to spend even more time on debate, but several chose to do so anyway, and my hat’s off to them. Truthfully I’m in awe of most any teacher, and these incredibly caring, dedicated, hard-working people going above and beyond are nothing short of amazing. I spent most of the institute working with them, and I must say it was a privilege.

The high school students were equally cool, though they spent most of their time working with two volunteers from Harvard’s debate team who were with us for the week. Most of them were taking time off from summer jobs to come to the camp, and after spending the first half of the day doing very demanding and intensive debate preparation, when I was more than ready to be done for the day, they’d have to head off to work.

The other impressive thing was that the vast majority of these students knew nothing about debate. I was expecting to get mostly experienced debaters and maybe a few new people, but it was just the opposite. So basically these kids took time off of work or otherwise gave up a week of their summer vacations and followed my vague directions to show up at some classroom on the UMass Boston campus on nothing more than a whim that debate might be interesting to them.

Fortunately, it seems, most of them were correct. Ralph and Leo, our Harvard volunteers, really went above and beyond to make the camp simultaneously fun, interesting, and rigorous. After just a few days, these students put on a very respectable first debate this morning. Obviously there were tons of mistakes, since they were all novices, but I saw so many glimmers of understanding, flashes of intuition, and all-around good instincts!

A few of them in particular stood out. One was a Somali girl who had immigrated to the US when she was 10 years old. Her school wasn’t actually even in the Boston Debate League, but she had done a rather different form of debate and chose to come to the camp anyway. I’m glad she did, because she was a real delight to have around! Though occasionally nervous, she was smart as a whip and had a very mature intellect. When it came to thinking through some of the more complex arguments we considered, she was usually the first to figure things out, and her contributions were invaluable.

Another was John (not his real name), who was pretty disinterested on the first day. But he’d already made the effort to come, and that was worth a lot. By the end of the institute, he’d won the award for Most Improved. According to Ralph and Leo, something clicked for him during his practice round this morning, and suddenly he just making some highly sophisticated arguments. His coach, who’d been coming to the institute as well, told me that John had done more work this week than he did in a full semester of this coach’s class last school year.

Debate does that sometimes, just hooks kids who have never been interested in or done well at school before. It’s one of the most rewarding things to see someone realize for the first time that he is smart. There are these kids who have just never tried very hard, always gotten bad grades, and for that reason earned probably deserved reputations as lackadaisical students. But debate, which is a much more participatory and student-centered activity, though also an extremely rigorous and intellectual one, seizes them in a way that nothing else has. Sometimes this spills over into their schoolwork, but even if it doesn’t, it’s often enough to keep them coming to school, which in turn is often enough to get them a diploma, and that makes a world of difference.

When we first started the League, I treated the awards we gave out at tournaments as an after-thought. As far as I was concerned, participation and education, not competition, were the important things. But it can be a special moment when a kid who has never won anything, not a sports trophy, not a school award, nothing, suddenly finds herself recognized for being smart. It is often not just the student but her family who are surprised, and that single positivite experience can sell someone on debate for a long time.

It was a great week, for them and for me. I spend so much of my time either dealing with the frustrations of poker or doing tedious/annoying administrative work for the League, work that needs to be done but is not the least bit fulfilling and certainly not the reason I started the League in the first place. But events like this, where I see so much development in such a short period of time and can experience vicariously the thrill that kids get when they are wrapped in debate, recharge my battery and help me power through all the other crap I have to do.

The dedication of volunteers like Ralph and Leo and of the teacher-coaches is inspiring, too. I deal so often with well-meaning people who never come through in the way they tell me they will or people who just want to volunteer to do the fun and rewarding stuff rather than the stuff that really needs to get done, and it is refreshing to spend time with the genuinely committ people who really know what it means to help.

The paradigmatic example of this is Leo, who was brought on board by his friend Ralph, initially just to be a third instructor at the institute. As Ralph started soliciting donations for our meals, however, it became clear that we’d sometimes need someone with a vehicle to pick up and deliver food. Leo ended up being that person, so a lot of his time was not spent talking about an activity he loves with a bunch of fun and dedicated students, but rather sitting in traffic and dealing with all the hassles of food delivery while Ralph and I did the fun stuff. And he was always asking if there was more to be done.

The best question, however, came from a group of students who approached us instructors after we’d said our farewells to ask, “Are we going to do this next summer?”

To which another student added, “Yeah, but for more than a just a week!?!?”

“In the film, the team of Richard Funches and Louis Blackwell, who are black and now former students of the inner-city North Long Beach high school, stick out. They stand out in an activity where few of the high-powered teams, mostly from private schools, have black members.

The documentary shows the Jordan pair – who after becoming state champs have since graduated and gone on to compete in college – trying to change the style of debate by speaking more slowly and drawing on personal experiences during arguments, instead of relying just on research by experts.”

I’m obviously looking forward to seeing this film, but I imagine it will be of interest to those of you who aren’t familiar with academic debate, as well. It’s very different, in many ways, from what you would expect, and it will be especially interesting to see how David and his kids attempt to expose the race and class disparities that permeate the activity.

This year, the topic on which I’m working is Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should substantially increase its public health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa. So I’ve been researching issues surrounding the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, how best to stimulate research for a tuberculosis vaccine, and the ethics of food aid.

Many young debaters and UDL’s use this material as their primary and in some cases only debate material. Moreover, because it generally ends up online somewhere where an enterprising high school student (and debaters are nothing if not enterprising) can find it for free, I’ve found myself judging debates in which suburban teams were unknowingly making my own arguments in front of me. It’s kind of weird to think that I may be one of the most influential people in the world of high school debate, but that very few high school debaters would even recognize my name, let alone my face.

Anyhow, that’s where my time’s been going recently and where a lot of it will be going until August. I’m still going to update regularly here, but it may turn out to be more like five times a week rather than seven, we’ll see. Today, though, Todd and I are headed to Foxwoods to play satellites to tomorrow’s $3000 Mega Stack, so you’ll surely get a trip report out of that.

There are actually some audio clips also, though they’re hard to find. After the second paragraph, there’s a drop-down box that says “related articles, multimedia, and images.” From there you can select three different audio clips of students debating.

Coming with us is Mandy, a sophomore at Tufts University and volunteer coach at the Josiah Quincy Upper School where Charles and Peter debate. She’s sweet and smart, once you get past her occasional moments of blondness.

JQUS’ other coach, Noah, picked me up from my apartment and then swung by JQUS to grab the kids when they got out of school. We headed straight to the airport and hopped in a quite long AirTran security line. It was at this point that Peter removed from his carry-on luggage the small, clear plastic container in which he’d placed his travel-sized liquids. Among the shampoo and toothpaste were several needles. “What are those?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m allergic to peanuts.” Wow, good to know, since I’m about to be responsible for you for three days. Peter had never flown before, in fact never been more than one state beyond Massachusetts, so he was excited but nervous. I walked him through the process of organizing his luggage for security, unable to shake the feeling that this was the exposition to some sort of narrative, and that I’d soon be experience rising action, a climax, etc. I remembered the advice of a playwright who visited my high school creative writing class: “If you hang a gun on the wall in the first act, you’ve got fire it in third.” If you give a kid a peanut allergy….

Once we’re through security, it dawns on me that airlines often serve peanuts. Peter looked me in the eye and swore up and down that only eating peanuts would trigger an allergic reaction and that it wouldn’t bother him if they were just served on the airplance.

This proved true. I fell asleep during takeoff, woke up about half an hour into the flight, and worked a bit on my laptop until the battery gave out. The flight was about as smooth as you could ask for, and Peter seemed to enjoy it, looking out the window whenever cloud cover broke to admire the view.

We landed without incident and met the folk from the Rhode Island Debate League, who had also been on our flight, at the baggage claim. Our hosts in Atlanta had sent me an e-mail about a shuttle service that would bring us to the airport, but Will, the director of the Rhode Island league, did not have his information with him, so I suggested he follow us and just hop on our shuttle, if possible.

As I attempted to lead my growing pack of ducklings to the shuttle area, I saw another familiar face: David Wiltz, director of the Los Angeles Debate League. I’ve worked with David for several short but intense periods of time during summer debate camps, and he’s one of my favorite people in the world. He’s kind, laid-back, and incredibly genuine, a great teacher and role model for the kids with whom he works.

David’s a grown man with a lovely wife and a brilliant little girl, but he’s still very genuinely in touch with West Coast hip hop style. He’s explicitly told me that, as a black man, he wants to show his students that people who look, dress, and talk like them can get married, start families, and hold ‘respectable’ jobs as well as anyone. It’s a great philosophy and one that I’ve seen work well in action: the LAUDL has attracted the most diverse pool of students I’ve seen in any UDL, drawing in All-American football players and LA gangsters alike.

Responsibility and preparedness, however, and not David’s strong suits. “Andrew, you know how we’re supposed to get to the hotel?” Aaaaaaaah, how do you people just show up in a foreign airport with high school students and no plan for how you will get to your hotel? He and his debaters join the pack, and together we find our shuttle. The driver won’t take more than ten, so the Rhode Island crew ends up waiting for the next one while the rest of us get to the Marriot Courtyard and check in.

My college debate partner, still one of my best friends, currently lives in Atlanta but is about to move to Tanzania. I’m excited to see her one last time, and she’s excited to meet some people from this Boston Debate League I’m always talking about. After we get settled, Emily swings by to pick up Mandy, Charles, Peter, and me and take us out to dinner. Looking for something cheap and quick, we settle on the Steak and Shake.

Peter has mentioned that he’s never heard a southern accent before, and our waitress provides a great introduction. She’s the picture of southern hospitality, a middle aged woman with hair as wide as her smile.

Peter orders a hamburger, fries, and a chocolate milkshake- no peanuts there, right?

The waitress returns and compliments us all on clearing our plates. “Everyone’s hungry tonight, no leftovers for the dog,” she tells us. “My husband keeps saying, ‘save something for Butchie, save something for Butchie.’ I told him, ‘You’re the cook, make a mistake or something!'” With a deep laugh, she drops off of her check and scurries off to a bus a nearby table.

“You don’t look so good,” Charles tells Peter. It’s true: Peter looks like he’s going to be sick and is swaying a bit on his chair.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” he announces.

“This kid. You know what he told me at the airport today? He’s got a peanut allergy. Good to know, right?”

“Andrew, he might be having a reaction now,” Emily tells me in a serious tone that has me worried immediately.

“He didn’t eat any peanuts.”

“I don’t know, maybe the fries were made with peanut oil or something? He doesn’t look good.”

Peter emerges from the bathroom, looking worse. His face is kind of swollen, and he’s still staggering.

“What’s the matter, Peter?”

“Nothing. Just a little disagreement with what I ate.” He starts darting his tongue about his mouth, like a dog who’s just been fed a spoonful of peanut butter.

“Peter, you alright?”

“My throat just feels a little tight. Like, my- what’s the dangly thing? Uvula?”

“Is this what happens with your peanut allergy.”

“Um, I don’t really know,” he says dismissively. “I should just drink some water.” He quickly downs a glass.

“We should get you home.”

“I’ll pay the check.” Emily grabs the slip of paper and takes it up to the register, refusing to take any cash from me.

We get Peter back to his hotel room, and he’s still not looking or feeling well. “What are we supposed to do, Peter, if this is an allergic reaction?”

“Uhm, I don’t really know. It usually passes.” He says this like it’s no big deal at all that he doesn’t know what to do, but I sure as hell don’t, and someone should.

“When are you supposed to take your epipen shot?” My familiarity with this kind of thing is limited to the scene from Pulp Fiction where Uma Thurman overdoses on heroin and John Travolta has to jolt her awake with a shot of adrenaline to the heart. In other words, my perception of needles administered by non-professionals is that they are a drastic, emergency measure only.

Peter’s clueless, who can I call? Of course! His mother. It’s well after midnight now, and I’m afraid she won’t answer a call from my unrecognized number, and would be freaked out anyway if I started telling her her son was having an allergic reaction. Peter was born in the US and speaks with English without any accent, but for all I know his mother might speak Mandarin exclusively.

So I instruct Peter to call her. He explains the situation in the same lackadaisical way he’s been talking to me. It doesn’t sound like she knows any more than he does. I meant to ask to speak to her, but he hung up too quickly.

Almost immediately after setting down the phone, Peter rushes into the bathroom and vomits loudly and repeatedly. I’m paralyzed with worry and indecision now. Thankfully some sort of maternal instinct kicks in and Mandy rushes into the bathroom after him to calm him down and clean him up. He rinses out his mouth and tells us he feels better now that it’s out of his system, then goes to take a shower.

I’m still not convinced, and Emily keeps telling me that we don’t want it to get any worse. Finally I decide I need to talk to his mother myself and call her again from Peter’s phone. I introduce myself and tell her immediately that her son is alright, lest she freak out, as I’m sure my mother would be doing in the same situation. She is remarkably calm, and, thankfully, speaks and understand English with near-perfect clarity.

“He just threw up, and his face is looking swollen. He says his throat feels kind of tight, also. I just wanted to speak with you myself and get your opinion on the situation. I’m happy to take him to the hospital if you think that would be appropriate now.”

“Hmmm, well his allergist did say we should take him to the hospital next time he shows any symptoms of allergic reaction.”

“Then that’s what I’m inclined to do.”

“OK. Just a moment, I’ll get you his insurance information. Oooh, I almost gave him his insurance card, but I thought, ‘It’s just a few days.'” Yeah. I guess a more responsible chaperone wouldn’t have taken a minor across state lines without that information, huh? I reassure her again that he seems fine but I want to be safe and make sure it doesn’t get any worse. She’s still calm and helpful, and I assure her that I’ll have Peter call once we’ve got anything new to report. After giving her my name and number, I hang up.”

“I’ll go get directions and the car,” Emily says as she walks out of the room.

Peter emerges from the bathroom in shorts and t-shirt, hair dripping. “I spoke with your mom again. You need to get dressed, we’re going to take you to the hospital.” He doesn’t look happy about this, but my tone makes clear that it’s not debatable.

“Charles, unless you badly want to come, I think it’s best for you to stay here. Mandy, Iwould like you come with me.” Both agree, and I leave Chris with Will’s phone and room numbers in case he needs anything. I call Will to tell him what’s up and ask him to check in on Charles, then Mandy and I take Peter out to the car where Emily is waiting.

The roads are empty and the directions simple, so we find the hospital without incident. I’ve never been to the ER (actually once as a baby but I obviously don’t remember that), but I’ve heard all kinds of horror stories about how long one might wait with a non-emergency condition. Consequently, I’ve come prepared with my laptop, notepad, and book. Thankfully, however, the place is empty. We sign in, Peter beelines for the bathroom, and they are calling his name before he’s out.

A very friendly nurse takes his vitals and asks about his condition. “What are you allergic to, sweetie?” Though he’s a 17-year old junior, Peter’s a tiny guy with a baby face that seems to trigger the maternal instincts of every woman he meets.

“Peanuts.”

“How long you been allergic to peanuts?”

“Um, a long time I guess.”

“Well, how’d you end up with peanuts?” she asks in a half-nagging, half-teasing tone.

We explain the situation. “Do you have any prescriptions?”

“Um, no. I carry epipens.”

“Did you take one?”

“I didn’t have it with me.”

“I have an allergy myself, so I know. You gotta keep ’em with you,” she says sternly, then cracks into a guilty smile. “Do I have one on me now? No, but I’m bad. You should keep them on you.”

“I know.”

“OK, a room just opened up in back, so we should be able to take him in a few minutes. Let us know if he starts to have trouble breathing,” she tells me. I thank her and take Peter back to the waiting room where Emily is.

We barely have time to tell her what’s happened before a nurse calls Peter’s name. Mandy and I both stand up and start to follow. “I can only take on of you.”

“Only one?”

She sighs and smiles. “Alright, come on,” gesturing to both of us. She’s moving quick, so I don’t really get a chance to talk to Emily, but I know I don’t need to. She’s waiting, without a book or anything, for as long as she needs to, and she’s not going to leave even if I tell her to. This is such a stark contrast to many of the volunteers and others I work with for the Boston Debate League. There are a lot of people who want to help, but everyone wants to do the fun or interesting stuff rather than the stuff that really needs to get done. Really helping is sitting in a hospital waiting room with nothing to read and no idea of how long you’ll be simply because someone needs you to be there at that moment.

A different nurse, also very friendly and gentle, gives Peter a gown and sets him on a bed. She looks him over again, asks a lot of similar questions, and says a doctor will be in soon. The doctor is a middle-aged Asian man with a heavy southern drawl. It’s a very strange combination of features, sufficiently so to be distracting even under the circumstances. The nurse returns quickly with a needle and tells Peter, with a bit of an embarassed smile, “I’m going to need to see your bottom.”

Blushing, Mandy and I duck out for a minute. When we return, Peter is zipping up his fly and then fidgeting uncomfortably while trying to sit on the bed. “We’ll need to give him one more shot, but we’ve got to get it ready first,” the nurse says as he leaves.

Peter needs to go the bathroom, so I follow him and wait just outside. While I’m waiting, I get a call from an unfamiliar 617 number on my cell phone. Figuring it’s Peter’s mom, I answer and update her on the situation. Her son emerges, and I pass him the phone. While we’re talking, the nurse signals to me that she’s ready with his shot. I tell Peter.

“Mom, they want to give me epiphedrine [sp?], should I take it?” Um, Peter, I didn’t get the impression this was optional. He asks again, and starts explaining something. I ask for the phone back.

“Hello? Yes, this shot wasn’t really presented as an optional thing.”

“Yes, I thought that was strange, but Peter kept me asking me, like a question.”

“Yeah, that’s why I took back the phone.” She laughs.

“OK, thank you for taking care of him.”

“No problem, I’m just glad I got a hold of you.” So true. I would have been very uncomfortable taking Peter to the hospital and authorizing shots without his mother’s permission.

They give him one more injection and tell us they’ll check back in half an hour. If his symptoms have gone away, they’ll be able to discharge him. He doesn’t look good at the moment: there are hives all over his neck and some on his inner arms as well. Mandy keeps telling him that he looks like hell, which is making him nervous. He starts shivering uncontrollably, but when I ask, he says he isn’t cold. I don’t want to worry him, but I’m starting to worry myself. Fortunately, the doctor is just outside and happy to check in. “Nervousness is a very common side effect of benadryl. Nothing to worry about.”

After twenty minutes, the swelling is down, but apparently not as far as it should have been. They give Peter another shot, and after another twenty minutes, we’re good to go. There’s Emily in the waiting room, smiling to see Peter walking around and looking better. She’s been sitting for like two and a half hours now, what a trooper. She drives us back to the hotel, unable to resist asking whether anyone wants to stop at the Steak and Shake.

Mandy takes Peter upstairs, and I stay outside for a moment to talk to Emily. She’s spent summers and even a full year once in Africa, but now she’s going indefinitely. We were very close in college, and even though I’ve only seen her a handful of times since we graduated, it’s very strange looking at her now, thanking her for being such a good friend tonight, and thinking that I don’t know when I’ll see her again.

“I’ll be in the DC area Christmastime.” Good to know. “Sorry we didn’t get to hang out much tonight.”

“Well the hospital was fun, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Good luck in Tanzania.”

“Thanks. Good night.”

I walk back inside. Mandy’s on the hotel phone. I shoot her a quizzical look. “Charles has the deadbolt on their door, and we’re trying to wake him up. Peter’s calling his cell.” Finally Peter answers the phone, meaning he’s made it into the room.

I’m about to head up myself when I hear “Brokos?”

“Holy shit, Aaron Davis.” Aaron is one of the best debaters I’ve ever taught. He’s also one of the most annoying, because he knows he’s one of the best. Don’t get me wrong, I love and respect him, but I HATE watching him debate. He’s arrogant and patronizing and rude and it’s so frustrating because he could be so good but he always tries to win on cheap shots. But I’m thrilled to see him, I really am, and I give him a hug.

I should say that Aaron is a rare breed, a black man who was openly gay at a rough high school. I have to respect that. But he’s in college at Pomona now, which seems to have given him license to flame it up. He’s got a ball cap pivoted about 130 degrees around his head, t-shirt tied up around his mid-riff, and a hint of a straggly, black goatee decorating his chin.

Apparently Chicago’s Payton High School, which is ‘urban’ in the strict sense of being in a city but not really educationally or financially disadvantaged in the sense that people tend to think of when they hear “urban public school,” has hired Aaron to coach their team at this event. Good to see him, but it’s 3 AM and I need to get some sleep.

David left the hall light on for me. Awwwwwwwwww.

This is good news for me because she’s already told me she’d like to volunteer with the Boston Debate League. As I’ve said before, alumni of any urban debate league are worth their weight in gold because of their dedication to the activity, their ability to connect with our students, and their experience with debate in general.

I found her note touching, so I’ll share:

“This is a hard note to write, but I figured I might as well tell everyone at the same time. I have decided to go to Amherst. To all my host at all the colleges that I stayed over night at, I would like to say thank you. To all the friends that I made at all these other schools that I visited, I hope that our friendship will not die.To everyone who wants me to stay in California, I will see you in 7 years. To my family all over the world, I love ya’ll so much. To the people that I randomly met here and there, you guys are awesome we need to keep in touch. And finally to my class mates and former classmates, who says people form Jordan can’t make it out of the ghetto and do something wonderful with their lives. Thanks to everyone one more time and I know that I have made the right decision.”

The purpose of Tuesday’s luncheon was to build that capacity. The NAUDL’s staff and Board members have a lot of expertise and experience with this sort of thing, which I do not. Their Board draws heavily on former debaters who went on to business or law school at Harvard University, which means that specifically they are well-connected in the Boston region.

I knew the NAUDL’s contribution to the event was going to be substantial, but I was still shocked by just how impressive it was. One of our guests expressed surprise that Harvard Law School was still in session, what with so much of their faculty at our luncheon, including Louis Kaplow, Sonja Starr, and Larry Tribe. For many, he will need no introduction, but for those who don’t know, Larry Tribe is one of the most prominent lawyers in the country, having argued before the Supreme Court in such landmark cases as Bowers v. Hardwick (where he challenged the constitutionality of anti-sodomy statutes) and Bush v. Gore.

I knew Larry was going to be there but had never met him before and had no idea what he looked like. We were expecting more than twenty guests, most of whom I had never met, but the moment Larry walked into the room, I knew it was him. He’s a small man, somewhat short and fit (though another guest commented that he had lost a good deal of weight, so that may be a recent development), with a tremendous presence about him. Sporting a handsome and well-tailored suit, he really seemed to exude confidence and competence. Tom Wolfe coined the phrase “Masters of the Universe” to refer to brokers and other Wall Street types, but the term leapt to my mind immediately upon shaking Larry’s hand.

The esteemed attorney, however, also came across as extraordinarily kind, gracious, and humble. I can only imagine what kind of hourly rate this man pulls down as a consultant, and here he is attending a luncheon for our little organization for the sole purpose of learning how he might able to help us more in the future. It’s really unbelievable.

This also demonstrates the potent gravitational pull of the debate world. It’s been decades since Mr. Tribe and some of our other guests participated in this activity, but they still remember it fondly and attribute much of their current success to their participation. A commonly echoed sentiment, and one with which I can sympathize, was that, “debate changed the trajectory of my life.” I know literally hundreds of people who would agree with this statement, which reminds me of why I’m so committed to expanding access for those who have the most to gain from it.

On that note, I had brought with me two students from the Boston Debate League to speak to our guests about their experiences and how they feel debate has helped them. Both were seniors, young black men in their late teens from low income families. One of them, Charles, is in his third year of debate and was one of the very first students to join the League during our inaugural season. The other, Stephen, is finishing up his first and only year of high school debate (both of these names are pseudonyms).

Looking at them in contrast to the rest of the room, I had to wonder to what extent they felt like a part of this debate fraternity. Nearly everyone in attendance was a former debater, and most were white men of middle age or older. Those who weren’t already wealthy were certainly well on their way, with connections to prominent institutions like Harvard University.

I had prepped them ahead of time, and the kids understood their role as both spokespeople for the League and evidence of our accomplishments. The very fact that they were able to speak extemporaneously, coherently, and persuasively to this distinguished audience was proof that we were doing something right, after all.

Charles thanked me afterwards for the opportunity and told me he was honored to have been chosen. Still, I couldn’t help but wander what that room looked like to them. Did they see their own futures, debaters who had parlayed a valuable extracurricular activity into prestigious and lucrative careers? Or did they see foreigners, people separated from them by the great gulfs of wealth, money, and power?

And how did I look as I, also a white man who for some reason could afford to volunteer so much time and money (they don’t know that I play poker), worked the room, introducing myself to the illuminati and thanking them for their support? Did they see me as a fellow-in-arms, playing the same game they were to try to direct some of this wealth and influence towards their less fortunate peers? Or was I just another white guy glad-handing the good ol’ boys as they looked on silently?

You should click here to read the full article, but here’s an excerpt:

“Asonye believes a great impact took place in those three days. He heard a newfound confidence in [his students’] voices.

One student, from Cuttington University, approached Asonye and said after camp, “Wow! That really expanded my mind.” Only a few days later he hosted a debate at his school and asked Asonye to judge it.

“Grassroots debate was there,” Asonye said. These were the tangible changes Asonye enjoyed. “”

I’m on my way out the door when my phone rings. I’m terrified that this will be someone canceling on me at the last minute, but it’s just Ho asking for directions by public transportation.

When I get to Faneuil Hall, I’m relieved to see that Carla, who I am expecting to be the least prepared, is first to arrive. Better yet, she tells me she’s got her whole first speech written and wants me to look at it.

It turns out to be a very detailed and dry history of Supreme Court litigation concerning school segregation. A lot of it does not appear to be in her words, though there are no quotes or citations. (By the way, I hesitate to call this plagiarism, though I guess technically it is, because I don’t believe it was her intent to pass off the work as her own. When I pointed out that she needed to cite her sources, she was happy to do so, and in general I’ve noticed a lack of knowledge about proper research and citation among the students I’ve worked with. Once teacher showed me papers he was grading where bibliographies included sources such as “termpapers.com”.)

I explain to Carla that she needs to cut out a lot of the history and focus more on making arguments about the current state of affairs. She’s surprisingly calm about the fact that I’ve just told her to rewrite her speech two hours before show time. Conveniently enough, the volunteer I wanted to have work with her shows up just then, so I introduce the two of them and then get to work preparing the stage for the public debates.

The good folks at Faneuil Hall have provided us with two long tables and a beautifully carved wooden podium. I ask if it’s alright to move the podium, and the property manager tells me, “Just be careful, it’s only held together by wooden pegs.” I shove it gingerly across the stage, all the while worrying that with my luck, I’ll be the one to destroy Samuel Adams’ lectern.

Surveying the stage now, it occurs to me that a single high school student might get pretty nervous sitting at the long table all by herself with dozens of people staring at her. So even though these debates will be one on one (unlike most of our competitions, which are two on two), I decide to suggest that each debater invite another student from her school to sit at the table with her during her debate for moral support. Carla in particular looks relieved when I suggest this.

It’s now 9:15, and nine of my ten debaters are here. The only one missing is Ho. His teacher is here, but she hasn’t heard from him. Just then, my phone rings again, and I answer to hear Ho tell me, “I just want to tell you, I am going to be fifteen minutes late.”

“You’re fifteen minutes late now, Ho.”

He’s silent for a minute. “I am going to be thirty minutes late.”

“Alright,” I can’t help but laugh. I know he’s plenty prepared already, so I’m not too worried about it, though Carla is really antsy to meet him and find out what exactly he’ll be arguing. Unlike the regular debate tournaments our students attend, this event is intended to be more about drama than debate. I don’t want the students worrying about who wins or trying to make each other look stupid on stage, so I’m giving them a chance to meet their opponents and run through their debates ahead of time. This proves very popular, as everyone is nervous and quite willing to strike a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” deal with her opponent.

When Ho finally arrives (nearly an hour late), he is looking very sharp in a dark suit and handsome tie. I’m wearing a Brooks Brothers that set me back a couple hundred dollars at 50% off, but I can’t disagree when he looks me up and down, straightens his tie, smiles, and says, “Ah ha, now I show you up!”

With about a half hour to go, I take all the students up on stage with me to show them where they’ll sit and stand and when. The sound guy we hired gives them a quick tutorial on how to adjust the height of the microphones, how close to put their mouths to them, etc., which is a great idea and something that hadn’t occurred to me. As he pointed out, it’s one less thing for them to be nervous about when they’re up there.

The last thing I explain is how to handle the audience. They are accustomed to being cross-examined by their opponents after a speech. For the public debate, however, the audience will also have the opportunity to ask questions, which means they could be asked pretty much anything. We go over some strategies for dealing with off-the-wall questions or things they just don’t know how to answer.

“First off, don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. If a question is really tangential, everyone will realize that, and you won’t look bad for saying, ‘I’m not prepared to answer that,’ or, ‘I’m afraid I don’t have that information,’ or something along those lines.

The other thing you can do is have some talking points. Have you ever seen politicians answer questions? “

“They don’t,” Ho interjects.

“Exactly. They smile, nod, say ‘Very good question,’ and then just say whatever they want to say, even if it has nothing to do with the question. So I’d suggest that you each think about important points you want to emphasize during cross-examination, and then if you get any questions out of left field, you can just brush it off and go to your talking points.”

As of 11AM, our scheduled start time, we still don’t have much of an audience. I take a look outside, and heavy winds are gusting heavy snowflakes through the crisp Boston air. Nothing’s sticking on the ground, but it looks and feels like a blizzard. No wonder so few people have chosen to come out. Oh well.

The emcee for the event, the headmaster of one of the schools in the League, thanks everyone for coming and then introduces the guest moderator for the first debate. As much preparation as we’ve done with the students in the debate, we’ve done very little with the guest moderators, and it shows. Despite my wild gesticulating from the back of the room, she lets the cross-examination of the first speaker go on for way too long, then thanks the students for a great debate and starts giving her closing remarks.

I run over to the foot of the stage and wait for an opportunity to interrupt her and tell her there are still three more speeches left. She blushes a bit and introduces the second speaker, who gives her four minute speech and then takes some questions from the audience. Now, with two speeches left to go, the moderator says, “Sorry about trying to cut you off prematurely before, now thank you both for a great debate,” and starts to leave the stage. I don’t have the heart to embarrass her again, and we’re already behind schedule, so I just mouth, “Don’t worry about it,” to the students on stage, who are shooting me confuzzled looks. Neither seems too disappointed to leave the stage without delivering a rebuttal speech, though.

After that things go smoothly, and the audience fills out a bit more. Mostly they are friends and family of the people in the debate, but occasionally some tourists come in and sit for a speech or two, which is very cool. Faneuil Hall is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Boston, and though it’s technically closed to them for our event today, we told the officers outside to invite anyone who came to see the building to come in and watch a bit of the debates. Faneuil Hall is, after all, of interest to the tourists precisely because it was a public forum where issues of pressing national importance were debated.

As the fourth debate is drawing to a close, I pull Carla and Ho out of the audience and line them up at the foot of the stage, ready to be introduced. Ho is fine about going up on stage alone, but Carla, even with a friend at her side, is shaking like a leaf. “Andrew, I don’t know this!” she whines. It’s very, very tempting to make a comment about she maybe could have started preparing before last night, but that’s not going to make a difference now, so I just tell her she’ll be fine. She looks less than reassured as the guest moderator for her debate announces her name and she takes the stage, clutching at her friend’s hand.

Ho is the first to speak, and he does a great job. We worked together on a brief opening, but he’s revised it since Thursday, and it’s better than ever. He introduces himself and his school, provides some quick background on the desegregation cases now before the Supreme Court, and dives right into his arguments against forced integration.

“Although forced integration schemes were intended to desegregate schools, the have ironically caused more segregation by driving students out of urban school systems,” he begins, and I smile. “Take my school, for example. In the 1970’s it was a white school, like 90%. Now, only 7% of students are white.”

This is killer stuff. For these debates, I tried to choose topics that were of national interest and importance but still personal and relevant to the students. Frankly, there’s nothing all that special about getting some people to talk about a random issue. This event is supposed to be a celebration of the voices and opinions of Boston’s young people, and it’s really, really good to hear some personal experiences brought into the debate.

When his four minutes are up, Ho confidently announces, “I am open for cross-examination.” Carla lobs him a few softball questions, and I can see immediately that his answers are scripted. Fine by me, but as soon as the floor is opened to the audience, things get rough. One of Ho’s teachers is in attendance, and with an impish grin, he rises from his seat.

“You argue that as America becomes more diverse, schools will naturally become more integrated. But the country is much more diverse than it was in 1954, yet schools have not been as segregated as they are now since the Brown decision. How can you be sure that this trend will change in the next fifty years?”

“Could you repeat that please?” I know damn well that Ho understood the question the first time, and I can see the wheels spinning in his head as his teacher struggles to rephrase.

“What assurance do you have that more diversity in the country will mean more integration in schools? Haven’t we seen just the opposite in the last fifty years?”

“Ah! That is a very good question. But I feel it is better to let integration happen naturally, because when you force it, you can actually make schools more segregated.”

With a knowing smile, the teacher sits back down, seemingly satisfied with his student’s stalling and evasion tactics.

Now it’s Carla’s turn to speak, and there’s an awkward silence as she fumbles to adjust the microphone. Once she starts talking, though, she sounds good, real good. Remnants of the history lesson, with proper citation, remain, but her speech is now chock full of strong arguments as well. The only indication of her nervousness is some slightly excessive pausing between sentences, and I’m confident that 75% of the audience doesn’t even notice.

Carla handles her cross-examination gracefully, turns over the floor to Ho for his rebuttal, and then concludes the debate with a strong rebuttal of her own. Now it’s my turn to take the stage for the first time all day to join Alan Khazei, co-founder of City Year and keynote speaker at the event, in handing out medals to all of the participants. “Nice job,” I tell Carla as I shake her hand and Dr. Khazei drapes a medal around her neck.

“Shut up, I sucked,” she smiles, taking her place alongside the others.

Afterwards, there is a lot of milling around and picture taking. As a way of reassuring them, I had promised the debaters that they’d have a sympathetic audience, since everyone would be there because they were interested in the debates. That turned out to be not entirely true, as Ho’s teacher had offered extra credit to her students if they came to the event. About half a dozen of them showed up and were (understandably) completely disinterested in the debates, sleeping or whispering quietly to each other the entire time. I didn’t really care since they filled out the audience and weren’t disruptive.

What was surprising was the way they treated Ho afterwards. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was a rock star: they all wanted to have their picture taken with him, shake his hand, congratulate him, etc. To the best of my knowledge, these were not friends of Ho’s or members of the debate team or even honors students, they were just random kids who knew him from school.

It’s a common assumption, one that I’ll admit to harboring when I first started working with the Chicago Debate League, that urban public schools students would have no interest in a debate team. In an environment where kids are supposed to be ‘hard’ and show no interest in academics or education, who would want to join a debate team? Even other nerds at my suburban high school poked fun at me on occasion.

But the truth is that you’ll find as many bright, articulate, outgoing, and/or intellectual students as you would anywhere else. And unlike at schools in more affluent areas, where college-bound students are offered multiple AP courses and a bevy of academically-oriented after-school activities, these students have fewer outlets. Sometimes you get these kids, sometimes even ones who have never done well in school before, who just fall in love to with debate because it is so different from anything that’s been available to them before. It’s tough and rigorous but it also very open-ended, so they can pursue arguments they are interested in and really be in control of what they are learning and doing in ways that they can’t in a classroom.

OK, tangent over. Bottom line: the event went well in a lot of ways, and the students surprised me by demonstrating some skills that I wasn’t sure they had acquired. I wish there was more of an audience, but now that we’ve done it once and ironed out the kinks, hopefully in future years we can put more effort into publicizing it.

After graduating from college, I turned down an offer of a full-time job with benefits (not a wise thing for a kid with a degree in philosophy to do) in the urban debate field so that I could be with my girlfriend in Boston. I missed the debate league, though, and so along with a friend of mine, I started a similar one in Boston. Two years later, six schools and about sixty students participate in our debate competitions.

Anyway, last Saturday we put on a series of public debates at Faneuil Hall, an historic building in Boston where Samuel Adams argued for revolution, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass argued for abolition, and Susan B. Anthony argued for women’s suffrage. I was obviously very excited to have my students become a part of the tradition of great debate at Faneuil Hall, but there was a lot of preparation to be done getting them ready to debate in front of an audience (generally, a single judge is the only witness to their debating).

Ten students from four different schools debated five different topics in a series of one-on-one debates. Although I provided them with background reading and some advice about how to prepare more than a month ago, I’ve worked with high schoolers long enough to know better than to expect that they will have done much of anything until I sit down with them and make them do it. So in the weeks before the event, I visited all of their schools to talk to the participants in person and explain what they would be doing and how they should prepare.

Two weeks before show time, I visited South Boston high school to meet with three of the public debaters. Although I recognize the faces of most of my debaters, I’m more of an administrator than a teacher or coach these days, so I don’t know them personally as well as I would like. It’s something I miss a lot. So although I knew who Carla (not her real name) was, it was almost like I was meeting her for the first time on this particular Wednesday.

Carla is in her first year of debate, and with only two competitions under her belt, is one of the least experienced students participating in the public debate. However, her coach, a wiry, balding, middle-aged history teacher who is also a boxer, ice hockey player, and lawyer, described her to me, in this thick Boston accent, as a “wookhaas” [workhorse] and assured me she’d be ready.

As I expected, she knew virtually nothing about her assigned topic, which was to argue that the Supreme Court should not prevent school districts from taking a student’s race into consideration when assigning her to a school. (For those who don’t know, two separate cases, one originating in Louisville and one in Seattle, are before the Supreme Court this term. In both cases, the school districts were seeking actively to integrate their schools by prohibiting, for instance, more black students from attending public schools that were already disproportionately black.)

When the Supreme Court first ruled in Brown v Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, it provoked massive conflict in the American South, where the only thing keeping black and white students separate were the laws prohibiting them from attending the same schools. In the North, however, neighborhoods were sufficiently segregated that the ruling had little effect, and with or without laws enforcing segregation, white students went to white schools and black students to black schools.

In the 1970’s, the Court started pursuing integration more actively, ordering the busing of students across major cities from white neighborhoods to black schools and vice versa. There were protests and riots akin to those seen two decades ago in the South, and in few places was the rioting worse than in South Boston, a working class white neighborhood.

Carla and I discussed this history a bit but talked mostly about the continued segregation of public schools in the US. Boston abandoned its controversial busing in favor of an “open enrollment” scheme where any Boston public high school student could end up at any high school in the city as a result of a complex preferencing system, similar in many ways to those in Louisville in Seattle, but with the important distinction that race is not a factor in the final assignment. Though the neighborhood of South Boston remains largely white, whites are now a minority at South Boston High. At least once year to this day, a teacher at the school tells me, students arrive at their school one morning to find graffiti reading, “Niggers go home. Keep Southie white.”

Carla is a pretty Hispanic girl, clearly very intelligent. She was flattered to be chosen as a participant in the event and blushed when I told her all the reasons she was selected (this to make her less nervous about speaking in front of an audience.) I don’t know how long her family has been in the US, but I’m guessing she is not first generation, given how well she speaks English.

I ask if anyone has any more questions, and Carla asks if I will be back next week. I wasn’t planning on it, but when she promises to have a draft of her speech typed up for me to review, I can’t say no. “I want to have everything finished by Monday, so I won’t have to worry about it,” she tells me. Add responsibility to her list of character traits.

On Friday, I realize that Monday is Martin Luther King day, and schools are closed. I call Carla’s coach and arrange to visit the school on Wednesday instead. On Tuesday night, I get a call from a reporter interested in doing a story on the public debate. I invite her to come with me to South Boston the next day, and she agrees.

When I arrive on Wednesday, two of the three students in Saturday’s debate, including Carla, are absent. Her coach tells me Carla hasn’t been in school all week. “What are the odds that she won’t show up on Saturday?”

“She’ll be thah,” he assures me.

I promised the reporter, who is from a local NPR affiliate, a chance to hear run-throughs of Saturday’s speeches. The only public debater present is Nina (not her real name), who is going to be advocating for guest worker legislation. I ask if she is ready to practice her first, four minute speech.

“Um, not quite.”

“Just give it your best.”

She stares at the reporter’s gigantic boom mic. “I have a question first.”

I walk over to stand next to Nina and look over her shoulder at her notes. “What’s up?”

“What’s guest worker legislation?”

Thankfully, as a radio reporter, our guest has no video camera to record the look of horror that flashes across my face. Not wanting to panic Nina, I do my best to explain the issue to her calmly and emphasize the importance of reading up on it in the next two days.

Although she didn’t get to hear as much public debate preparation as I’d promised, the reporter seemed really impressed with what she saw anyway. While I worked with some other students on the team, she interviewed Nina and the coach, and then when the students left, she interviewed me.

My philosophy is that the students make the best salespeople for the Boston Debate League. It’s virtually impossible to speak to them without being impressed by how smart, articulate, and outgoing they are. Consequently, I do what I can to encourage media coverage to focus on them rather than on me.

The story of a kid who plays poker to support a debate league for inner city youth seems like it might be a bit too enticing, so when she asks if running the League is a full-time job for me, I just tell her, “It feels that way sometimes.” Thankfully she laughs and moves on.

To be continued