When Eric Edmonds steps out of a classroom at Kenwood Academy, he may be asked to present a hall pass.
But Edmonds is not one of the school`s teenage students; he is a 20-year- old sophomore at the University of Chicago who coaches Kenwood`s debate team. Kenwood is the only Chicago public school that has a debate team. Other schools have debate clubs, but they don`t compete in tournaments.
This has been Edmonds` first year coaching the team, and he is happy with the results, he says. This also was the team`s first year of competition on the varsity level, and it reached the elimination rounds (one of the top eight) in one of eight tournaments it entered. It also reached elimination rounds in three other tournaments on the junior varsity and novice levels, which are less advanced.
”I get very happy when they win,” Edmonds says. ”Since debate is such a personal thing, it`s extremely gratifying when they win.”
His most rewarding moment of the season, he says, came when the novice team accepted its trophy for reaching the elimination round in its first tournament at Oak Park-River Forest High School.
Edmonds recalls sophomore Ben Stanford`s beaming smile when Ben was handed the award at the tournament, the first one in which he had competed.
”When we broke into the finals, he was convinced of our ability,”
Stanford says of Edmonds. ”He was really proud of us.”
”Eric`s given us something to be proud of,” says junior Pat Combes, who has been debating for two years.
Everyone at the tournament was especially gracious to the team because of its victory, Edmonds says. The team is finally receiving respect from other schools now that it has won some tournaments, the debaters say.
The debate team was started four years ago, when a student asked Robert Nesbitt, a history teacher, to sponsor one. The team has eight members divided into novice (first-year) and varsity levels.
Before this year, the team was run by students, Nesbitt and occasional volunteer coaches. Nesbitt handles administrative duties but does not coach the team, and previously the school did not have money to hire a coach. The school, at 5015 S. Blackstone Ave., is a college prep school for 1,900 students in 7th through 12th grades.
The team operates on a ”candy bar” budget: Money for tournament entry fees, transportation and judges` pay is raised by chocolate sales and donations from parents. This year the team raised about $500, and it hopes to raise that amount for next year. Some of the suburban teams have budgets of up to $25,000, Edmonds says.
Edmonds began coaching the team after a Kenwood debater approached him for advice last year at a tournament Edmonds was judging. Edmonds worked with the student and later decided he would like to coach the Kenwood team. He approached the community relations department at the U. of C., which sponsors programs to enrich neighborhood schools, and persuaded it to pay him for the coaching. He had no trouble persuading the Kenwood team to accept his services, he says.
Edmonds, who is majoring in economics, debated for all four years he was in high school and won several awards. He was among the top 12 debaters on policy nationwide in 1989, his senior year. He has been judging high school tournaments for five years.
Edmonds` approach to practices and courtroom order has disciplined the team and helped to improve its record, the debaters say. Before Edmonds came, the students` research was less thorough, their arguments were weaker and practices were less organized, says Rosanna Orfield, a sophomore who is team president.
She says Edmonds is always in the team huddle talking strategy at every tournament. He`s the offensive coordinator who knows the evidence better than any of his debaters; he`s the defensive coordinator who can anticipate the opposition`s next move; and he`s the cheerleader.
The team has rigorous debate dress rehearsals and long library sessions to prepare for rounds. Practices with Edmonds are focused and organized, the debaters say.
Edmonds acknowledges that debate is hard work. He requires that the team practice and do research for 9 to 12 hours a week-and that is when there isn`t a tournament. The tournaments add about 17 hours to their schedules.
”Everything`s pretty strict with Eric,” says junior John Kim, a second-year debater.
The team is given a general topic to research at the beginning of the year. When they arrive at the tournament, they are told whether they will argue the affirmative or negative side of the topic. The affirmative proposes a plan in support of the topic, and the negative side refutes it. Whichever side argues more persuasively wins the round. The judges base their decision on the number of arguments presented, how logical they are and how well the debaters present them.
”Having (Edmonds) put us in the library all day is not uncommon,”
Stanford says.
Now all that hard work has paid off. ”I don`t think we would have made it as far without him,” Combes says.
Edmonds` goal is not to teach his debaters to impress their teachers or con their parents; it is to get them to think for themselves, he says.
”I try not to impose my own values on them,” he says. ”I teach them to question things. The problem with a lot of people is that they don`t even bother to question.”
Edmonds says that by learning both sides of an argument, his students can form an opinion from a knowledgeable standpoint.
It is rewarding to watch the team learn how to develop strong arguments and do thorough research, he says, because those are skills they will use throughout life.
Orfield says people who argue illogically annoy her more now than they did before she joined the debate team. Other students say that they use their debate skills in everyday life, such as when they`re trying to persuade their parents to let them use the car.
Kenwood teachers say there is a noticeable difference between the work of debaters and non-debaters. The debaters tend to do better in advanced-placement classes because they have learned to write quickly and formulate good arguments, Nesbitt says.
English teacher Judith E. Stein says the debaters in her class know how to construct a logical argument and know the discipline of research. ”We think they`ll be doing that forevermore,” she says.
Edmonds` age helps him to coach the debaters because he can use himself as an example. His youth has helped him build trust with them, he says.
”I get to know their personalities, how they work and what worries them,” he says.
Orfield says, ”My relationship with Eric is much more personal” than the relationship other teams seem to have with their coaches. ”He can afford to be on a different level. He`s just one of the debaters.”
Edmonds` rapport with the debaters seems to reflect the comfortable relationship between him and the team. The debaters like to tease him about his conservative style of dressing, and he accepts the razzing with good nature and returns it. Pointing to several debaters clad in tennis shorts and theater makeup at an after-school practice and noting that they had stuffed their suits in duffel bags, he says wryly: ”These were the nicely dressed gentlemen of the debate team.”
When his debaters are running themselves down or running into snags in their busy lives, Edmonds tries to help them out. He recalls when Combes was looking for a job to squeeze in between debate practice and schoolwork.
Edmonds says he gathered from comments Combes made that he was ”stressed out” about job-hunting and juggling his commitments. So Edmonds helped him find a job at a grocery store that he could work into his schedule and gave him advice on how to balance his life.
Edmonds, who grew up in a suburb of Dayton, has his own balancing act to handle. He is taking four classes at the university and devotes 30 hours a week to the debate team in the fall and winter quarters. In his free time he sleeps, he says. ”If I had time, I`d like to play racquetball.”
”School can get stressful-even without debate,” he adds. But he loves the challenge of his schoolwork. ”It`s the type of education I think everyone should have.”
Edmonds says his future with the team and the future of the coaching program depends on the size of the teams in the future. His goal has been to make the team self-sufficient so it can continue, he says.
He has confidence that his debaters can follow in his academic footsteps. ”I think a lot of them have it in them, and they`ll be very good at whatever they want,” he says. ”They just have to decide what that is.”
