May 08, 2023 At 12:23 PM EDT
Kris Wright never thought he would be a high school teacher, let alone a successful high school debate coach. When he was an undergrad at the University of Texas at Austin studying philosophy, Wright, who grew up near Dallas, wanted to become a professor.
But as many former high school debaters do, Wright judged high school debate competitions in college to make extra money. When a team from the Dallas-Fort Worth area needed an experienced coach, they reached out to Wright.
"[Debate] is a highly specialized content area," Wright, 40, told Newsweek recently. "So much of really advanced debate is like graduate-level philosophy—that's the stuff you're teaching the kids to read, to analyze, argue about synthesizing [in] really creative ways."
But one encounter with a student changed Wright's professional trajectory and showed him that he's the one with a lot to learn.
One of the students on that Dallas-Fort Worth team was the first debater to come out as gay while Wright was their coach. The student was interested in queer theory and different philosophical texts that would interrogate sexual and gender identity—a field of study with which Wright was totally unfamiliar.
"Those were things that were not part of the core philosophical focus that UT had," he said. "But at that point, my view on coaching was [that] my job is to adapt to what [the students are] interested in, it's not about driving what I'm interested in."
So Wright decided to engage with those texts for the first time, prompting the student to tell the coach that he had "wasted his education."
"Basically his pitch was like, 'You're not really exposing yourself to things that are going to challenge your worldview.' And that was true," Wright said.
This realization prompted him to pursue a master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies at UT and reflect on what he really wanted to do with his life.
The answer, he found, was teaching secondary education, starting with the nonprofit organization Teach for America. From then on, Wright has continued to teach and coach debate, where he imparts his knowledge on students while also learning from them along the way.
"That's the beautiful thing about teaching. I'm not always right; the student is also a source of knowledge," he said. "Everyone talks about how you're gonna affect the lives of your kids, but [if] you open yourself up, your life and your understanding of yourself in the world is going to be transformed through them."
Wright was named the 2023 Coach of the Year by the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL), an award that recognizes a teacher who coaches debate and who exemplifies NAUDL's core mission of "helping students become more academically successful and civically engaged through the sport and rigor of debate," according to the organization's website.
He has coached debate at Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School in Dallas for five years but has been a Dallas Urban Debate Alliance (DUDA) coach since 2012. Irma Rangel is a member of the Young Women's Preparatory Network, a nonprofit that operates the largest network of all-girls, public, college-preparatory schools in the nation.
In March, the executive director of DUDA, which is affiliated with NAUDL, Cindi Timmons, surprised Wright with the Coach of the Year honor before a school-wide assembly. Wright said he had mixed emotions about the attention.
"I think anytime you have your peers recognize you, you're proud of that," Wright told Newsweek, adding that being on the receiving end of that much praise was "deeply embarrassing."
And Timmons wasn't light on the praise; she called Wright one of the "best educators" she has ever known.
"We are so incredibly fortunate to have him in our local league and in NAUDL," she said in a speech during the surprise ceremony. "Mr. Wright plays a pivotal role in our organization and is arguably the coach with the single greatest impact on our league."
To qualify for this award, a coach must be an Urban Debate league high school coach for at least one year, as well as a full-time teacher at the affiliated league school.
Sara Sanchez, the director of programs and communication at NAUDL, said Wright was selected from a pool of eight nominees from various leagues.
She told Newsweek that Wright's application rose to the top based on the strength of his nominating materials from Timmons and Evan Gilbert, who is a current program staffer at DUDA and a former Wright student.
In her speech, Timmons said Wright is dedicated to the NAUDL mission of serving underserved students.
"He lives his mission of serving under-resourced learners," she said. "He gets to school early, stays incredibly late, works almost every weekend, is always on call for his students, and gives most of his summer to nonprofit work benefitting these young people."
This includes his creation of the nonprofit Texas Debate Collective in 2009, an organization which provides low-income students with elite debate training for free over the summer.
Timmons added that Wright knows that the only thing his students are lacking is opportunity, and he gives "every fiber of his being" to make those opportunities possible, and for them to be able to perform at their best.
At the ceremony, three of Wright's current debaters lauded his patience and willingness to give his time and knowledge.
Debater Angelica Sanchez said a coach is someone who "cares about you, is patient with you and someone who will do whatever it takes for you to grow and be the best version of yourself," before noting that she believes Wright is "all of this and so much more."
"It's a lovely reminder of why you teach. You hope in some ways that their lives are better off because of you, and certainly my life is better off because of them," Wright said.
The coach told Newsweek that a student's shortcomings are often a reflection of the teacher's failure to connect learning to the students' interests in a meaningful way and to empower students to identify and overcome obstacles to their understanding or engagement.
"If a kid doesn't get it [or] a kid is not invested in learning, the teacher needs to take a hard look at themselves," he said.
Still, coaches also need to prepare their students to fail, something that is very frequent in the competitive debate scene. Building a student's resilience requires teaching them how to think and anticipate challenges on their own.
"No matter how good you are, you are not going to win every debate," Wright said. "You can't be there to help them [in the debate round], so you have to prepare them with a set of skills that enable them to adapt to scenarios that are increasingly more unpredictable."
Coaching in an Urban Debate league, where many schools are underfunded and comprised of largely low-income, non-white students, has its own challenges. Wright said students and adults from more privileged backgrounds often have a racist, classist set of expectations when it comes to the intellect of Urban Debaters.
"That creates a hostile space that doesn't really nurture confidence [or] the capacity to be vulnerable enough to try," he said. "And your kid is going to have to survive it and somehow find a way of flourishing."
As Wright continues his coaching, he wants his students to leave their high school debate careers with more than just trophies.
"I hope they walk away with the capacity to be less concerned with whether they're right in the beginning and more invested in whether they end up right in the end," he said. "I hope they walk away capable of advocating for what they believe is right, doing it passionately and not backing down in the face of [opposition], while at the same time recognizing the humanity in others—particularly the ones that they are most confident are on the wrong side of an issue."
At the school assembly in March where he received his Coach of the Year award, Irma Rangel debater Yajaira Flores said Wright is more than just a coach or a teacher—he's a mentor and a friend who takes time to learn about and understand his students.
"He is a role model to his students," she said. "Because of how transparent, vulnerable and giving he is to his students, we all look up to him."
After his students spoke, Wright got choked up when he took the microphone to speak.
"No matter how old you get, the imposter syndrome is real," he said, according to a TikTok of the ceremony. "No matter what you achieve in life, there are going to be moments when you doubt yourself."
He confessed he wasn't sure if he deserved the honor or any of the accolades he's received, but he was sure of one thing.
"With absolute certainty, I can say that my life has been so profoundly shaped by the students that I've had the honor to teach," he said. "That's the power of teaching: not the impact you make but how profoundly your life is going to be shaped by the people you have the honor to work with every day."
