Sophomore Ella Kim had to make some tough choices at the end of her freshman year. Would she stay in speech and debate, a class she excelled in, or would she give up the elective to follow the traditional rigorous course load of an AP/IB student? Kim ultimately decided to remain in the class. However, she recently learned that speech will likely not be offered as a class next year, a reality that has prompted her to make a series of new decisions.
“I am honestly really disappointed because the speech program is what initially attracted me to Fullerton, but this opening just gives me more room in my schedule to fit another honors or AP class,” Kim said.
School officials informed junior speech and debate students that the class probably will not be offered at Fullerton. Instead, there are some discussions about shifting the class to an after-school program. What would that look like? Many students asked the same question; however, as of now, there are no definitive answers.
For the past five years, the program has been supervised by Tarin Almstedt, who started teaching the classes without prior speech and debate experience. Instead, Almstedt used his leadership training to promote a strong team spirit.
“I do have my Master’s degree in school leadership and essentially that answers, ‘How do we bring people together? How do we get unlike values on the same page?’” Almstedt said.
Although students are enrolled in one class, there are essentially two teams, a speech team and a debate team. While speech and debate students do not compete together, their support for each other fuels the program. Junior Jane Kwak says that throughout Almstedt’s time at FUHS, he has been able to create a safe space of encouragement and togetherness.
“[Speech and debate] was like an area to socialize and get my work done. But outside of that, [the class] also provided a sense of community,” Kwak said.
Kwak transferred her sophomore year from Troy, and the main appeal of FUHS was the fact that speech and debate was a supported program. In her past experiences with speech and debate as a club at other schools, she found that it was more disorganized.
“And I think because it was a club, it wasn’t much of a team, but because we have a class [at FUHS] and we spend every day together, it becomes more of a community and team,” Kwak said.
Aside from creating a positive community for his students, Almstedt understands that he supervises highly competitive students. “My biggest aim was to give students opportunities to use their voice at the highest levels of competition,” Almstedt said.
And with his guidance, the team has accomplished just that. The team recently competed at a tournament Feb. 13-14 at Harvard University. Among 136 competitors, sophomore Olivia Woo, junior Matthew Martinez, and junior Jane Kwak broke into elimination rounds. And Ella Kim went as far as semi-finals, putting her in the top 12 of the competition.
While student accomplishments at the various competitions are important, it is also necessary to highlight the hard work of Almstedt, who has guided the team through 14 tournaments this year with four more to go. Throughout his time as adviser, he also has judged over 200 rounds of competition. Being the speech and debate adviser isn’t simply teaching an additional period, it really is a full-time job. “I’m a speech and debate coach, travel adviser, and at times, a debt collector,” Almstedt said.
Finding someone to coach the team might be tough considering the intimidating job description. However, Almstedt is hopeful for the future of speech and debate at FUHS.
He said that if the school moves to an afterschool program, there could be a few perks. “An after school coach counts as a walk-on coach; they don’t have to be a credentialed teacher. Also, students won’t be forced to choose between speech and debate and the AP/IB program, which again is definitely an advantage,” Almstedt said.
