Big thank you to everyone who’s contributed to the Boston Debate League so far to help us get more unique donors for our “March Goodness” competition (details here). If you enjoy reading this blog, and especially if you feel like it has helped to make you money, please donate to the Boston Debate League using this link. With as little as $10, you will make my day and contribute to an incredibly valuable program for young people who badly need and deserve such opportunities.
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!