Finding Balance in Debate
January is the month when everyone begins their wellness kick. We set a new year’s resolution to work more, work out more, eat less, and spend less. A quick Google search gives multiple articles that say somewhere around a third of folks won’t keep their resolution through the end of January, and the large majority won’t reach their ultimate goal. The problem for debate coaches is that no matter what our resolution is, it requires finding more time in an already over-packed schedule. When debate coaches are not teaching or working on their classes, they are traveling to tournaments. In order to get all of those students to a tournament, debate coaches take their nights and weekends “off” to run a carwash or make travel arrangements, often spending hours looking for the best possible deal to save the students and the school the most amount of money.
During these exotic trips across the country, the debate coach is in charge of the health and well-being of every student. By the end of a weekend, your typical coach will have fed several students, dealt with the random illness of at least one child (using that ever useful first aid kit of Advil, Pepto Bismol, cough drops, and Band-Aids), resolved the inevitable mix-up at the hotel, talked down at least one parent from taking his or her child out of debate due to a late arrival, and coached and judged every student. During their “down time,” coaches will also research the topic, prepare lesson plans for the upcoming week, and grade the homework that they promised their classes on that Monday.
The facts are that modern debate prevents a coach from finding balance. The answer is not another new year’s resolution to wake up extra early at a debate tournament to work out (thereby sleeping only four hours instead of five) or packing healthier food (that you inevitably give to the students). The answer is changing our structures of modern debate. We need to make big and small moves to privilege balance and healthiness in debate if we are to physically be able to handle our jobs. Privileging balance in debate means focusing on the educational experience and deemphasizing winning. As a debate coach, I thought I did just this because I wasn’t one of the mean coaches who wouldn’t let teams who lost eat dinner that night. The truth is, deemphasizing winning means creating tournament structures that do not focus on crowning the one true champion. Multipleday debate tournaments that happen nearly every weekend do not focus on education—they focus on privileging specialization that is antithetical to the concept of balance. Our students are not professional athletes; we are not only debate coaches. Our students and we have families, other classes, and other demands on our time. Time off to do homework, prepare lessons, cook dinner, or engage in non-debate social events is not being “unproductive,” but rather finding balance to recharge. The amount of time we spend during tournaments ensuring that the very best decision is made, because our students deserve that, needs to be balanced with finding the time to end our tournaments at an hour that allows everyone to sleep, because our students deserve that, too. We deserve sleep, too. If the only way to ensure that adults and students receive eight hours of sleep is to cut coaching time and omit an elimination round, that is not a poorly run tournament—that is a well-thought out tournament that is focusing on personal wellness.
Long tournaments and travel are a necessary evil of the wonderful good that is debate. Debaters have seen the country (or at least the airports and Courtyard Marriotts of the country) and have friends from across the country. All of these experiences are an unquantifiable benefit of debate. We also need to give ourselves time to renew our roots at home and our enthusiasm for debate. Much like the college student who schedules an allnighter to finish a paper, scheduling more than three weekends a month for debate travel will inevitably lead to burn out and failure.
As debate coaches, we can all theoretically agree to give ourselves one to two weekends off a month— but in practice, we fail. We have a one-day tournament that we figure is no big deal. Our friend will have a tournament we want to support. A hard-working student will beg for more chances to compete. To borrow a Colombian colloquialism, we are being “alcahuetas”—we are being too lenient and spoiling these students. Like the 5-year-old who loves sugar, our students love debate. Sometimes, we have to say no—for their sake and for ours. We also are spoiling ourselves by assuming we can always say yes. In the past year, I have talked to at least half a dozen debate coaches who feel visibly guilty because they have to miss a debate tournament due to a family obligation. It is not only okay to say no because of these special events, but it must be okay to say no because everyone needs time off. We need to support each other as colleagues and as friends to find this balance. We need to create a culture where students and adults are entitled to time away from debate to see their family, to do their schoolwork, or to catch up on the latest episodes of The Office.
The summer off is the best bonus to being a professional educator. Colleagues travel, enjoy hobbies, or leisurely prepare for the year. Debate coaches spend the end of the school year rushing to get ready to travel, and then work 16-hour days for two months. For this to work, we encourage our students to attend various portions of camp. Without camp, they can’t be successful. Without teaching at a camp, we get rusty and become irrelevant at our profession. It is too much. There are 15-year-old students who give up their entire summer to one activity—many of whom will chose to quit before they graduate from high school. There are families who are spending parts of college funds to make sure their students are a part of debate camps that don’t even have a financial aid process. We need to say enough is enough to this culture.
At some point, as educators, we need to say we may have all done wrong in the past, but we can make it stop. We should not ask our students, and should discourage our youngest students, from specializing immediately. They burn out, which is bad for our own debate teams, and they are unable to experience other activities, which is clearly bad for them. Our students and our colleagues have a right to take a few weeks off during the summer. Further, we should vote with our feet about healthy and balanced debate camps. I choose to vote with my feet that any camp that violates good, educational practices (no official and open financial aid process, where the student/teacher ratio is too high, where the instructors are not professionals) will not see me as an employee, nor will I facilitate students attending. Others may have other factors, but we need to focus on the balance and healthiness of ourselves and our students when making recommendations or employment decisions. Where we work is a strong signal that we condone an institution's practices to our colleagues and to our students.
Privileging balance and healthiness is not about being selfish. It is about using our position as role model to dozens if not hundreds of students every year to teach them balance in their lives. The more we ask super-human feats of ourselves, the more it is expected of our students. My current job is to sell the line that “debate changes lives.” The statistical evidence and the stories are powerful proof that debate can change the trajectory for students, but my powers of persuasion come from my own experience with debate. For me, debate provided me with the skills, the motivation, and the support system to reach various goals. Believing in the power of debate is what makes me say it has to change. We need to push back competitiveness and highlight balance in our lives—if not for ourselves, for our students.
Nicole A. Serrano is the Executive Director of the Dallas Urban Debate Alliance in Texas.
This article was originally published in the January 2012 edition of the Rostrum.