Jul 14, 2023 At 04:56 PM EDT
It is rare for adults to continue engaging in their favorite activity from high school. Many grow up and grow out of their adolescent obsession. They no longer have the stamina to play competitive sports, or they see that their musical performance skills have waned over the years.
But Douglas Matute, 26, built a career out of his passion for debate that he found back in high school.
Matute was born and raised in Honduras in a tumultuous public education system.
"It was a lot of protesting happening in education, so it was not rare that I will be in school for two, three months at a time every year," he told Newsweek.
After attending a vocational middle school where he learned about electricity and mechanics, he moved to the United States to live with his father at the age of 15.
He did not speak any English before he moved to the U.S., which he said was a challenge, but Matute seized every opportunity afforded to him due to "somewhat of a stubbornness to not fall behind" in school.
While attending an English-language school, he took the time to teach himself English by immersing himself in after-school programs, like sports and performance arts, that he knew were comprised of English speakers, and he tried to hang out with students who did not speak Spanish. Matute also did a lot of reading and carried a dictionary in his pocket for his first five months in Boston to look up words he didn't understand.
"The race was started already, and I was way behind and I wanted to compete against other peers," he said. "I was just throwing myself into communities that put me in uncomfortable and awkward situations [because] I still needed to communicate."
He took English as a Second Language (ESL) classes when he started at his English-language high school. He moved from ESL level 1 to ESL level 6 within four months and when he transferred to to the Margarita Muñiz Academy, a bilingual high school in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston, he was taking regular English-language classes.
Matute noted that his situation was atypical among high school students who are recent immigrants. He said he was lucky enough to immerse himself in these programs and activities when he arrived in Boston because he didn't have to work after school or take care of siblings.
"I did have two years to sort of navigate and assimilate [into] the culture of a new country," he said. "But it's not something common. A lot of students feel isolated or don't know how to ask for the resources or simply don't have the social skills to go and ask what they can do in order to grow."
The most formative activity he joined was the Debate en Español team at Margarita Muñiz Academy in 2015.
Debate en Español is a Spanish-language debate program that mirrors the English-language program in schools.
He said his humanities teacher pushed him and his debate partner to join the team because of their strong academic Spanish-language and reading comprehension skills.
"[Debate en Español] created an environment in which students had opportunities to expose themselves into high enrichment environments [so] that they could potentially use the Spanish skills to improve cognitive development skills, language acquisition and eventually transition to English," he said.
Roger Nix, the assistant director of after-school debate at the Boston Debate League (BDL), was working at the league when Matute was a debater. He remembers him as a student who worked hard in the new program and was always looking to improve.
"He was someone who wanted to be better and keep learning new things constantly," he said.
Beyond those key academic benefits, debate was fundamental in pushing Matute out of his "antisocial" shell.
"I was really socially awkward," he said. "I didn't like to talk to people, or if I could avoid having a social interaction, I would take that path."
But joining debate forced him to communicate and become comfortable speaking around others. He was able to confidently stand up in front of judges and convince them he was right, all with proper eye contact and good body language.
Matute attended UMass Dartmouth to obtain a double degree in math and physics and conducted research on nonlinear optics and astrophysics. He thought his career path would lead to scientific research but, as any good debater knows, sometimes you must adapt as the situation changes on the fly.
After he finished his thesis senior year, Matute worked with a STEM education research group translating physics material from English to Spanish for special education students who migrate to the U.S.
This work really caught Matute's attention. He was planning on going to graduate school to continue his physics degree. But after working for two years coding in a cubicle at Boston Scientific Research and Lasers, Matute decided to become a teacher.
In 2021, he returned to the bilingual high school from where he graduated to teach physics in both English and Spanish. In his second year of teaching, he was asked to coach the Debate en Español team.
He said the school's vice principal asked him to take on the position because he was a young teacher around whom the students felt comfortable.
"I wasn't your typical serious science teacher," he said. "I was silly, goofy, I would listen to my kids, and I would teach them things that were interesting to them."
While Matute had experience as a debater, he was not prepared to coach a team of novices. He attended a coaching summer academy hosted by the BDL for training on how to teach debate concepts. On his own time, Matute did research, buying books and watching YouTube videos on argumentation and what makes a good debater, to brush up on his skills.
Matute saw himself in his students, as shy kids who sat in the back of the classroom alone reading their packets became great public speakers and found community by the end of the season.
"It was really awesome and empowering seeing that transition from struggling to read or being super shy in front of everybody to these leaders in the community and just seeing them participate and socialize outside of the practices and meeting new people that spoke the same language as them and felt the same struggle as them," he said.
As a coach, Matute interacted often with the BDL, as the group frequently checked in with teams and worked on initiatives to incorporate debate techniques into the classroom.
Matute was eventually recommended to work for the BDL as a Debate en Español program manager. The league thought a young teacher would be a great fit as they retooled the program to make a stronger impact and to align better with the needs of the kids.
Nix said Matute was a top contender when considering who would fill the role due to his experience as a debater and his language skills.
At the time, the league was looking for a current debate coach who "knew debate," as the league did not have someone in that role who was a former debater and was fluent in Spanish—specific criteria that not many people fulfilled.
"[Douglas] is someone who is uniquely positioned to help us listen to what the students in the program want out of our program," Nix said. "He knows what their experience is like, he knows what they're going through because he did it himself, because he coached them."
This came at a time when the league was considering shutting down the Debate en Español program for a year to revamp.
Nix said that amid the COVID pandemic, debate participation took a significant hit as schools moved online, and the league lacked Spanish-speaking employees and the resources to expand programing for Debate en Español.
"We were trying to asses if we're only serving [50 to 60] students, does it make sense to offer this program," Nix said, adding that the league considered shutting down the program to reallocate resources.
Unsure about whether to accept the position, Matute attended a dinner with Debate en Español students and coaches. Students and alumni spoke to the critical importance of the program, bringing the entire room to tears at the thought of other students missing out on this opportunity.
In that moment, thinking about his own experience and the experience of his students, Matute decided to join the BDL, noting that "the tears were more impactful than I was expecting."
"That was the first time that I heard directly from all the kids that were not my debaters how impactful the program was," he said. "And I thought about if this program were to close for one or two years, there's going to be two generations of kids who might miss the opportunity to be more socially involved, to be academically challenged, to start believing in themselves just like I did, like my debaters did."
The league was also impacted by the emotional pleas of students and coaches trying to save the Debate en Español program. The BDL ended up saving Spanish-language debate "largely because of the people who were still involved" who encouraged the league to "stick with it."
Matute was motivated to not only continue the program but improve and expand it to deliver more opportunities in Boston and with other leagues across the country.
During his first summer with the league, Matute worked teaching labs at the BDL summer camp before he began working on recruiting efforts for teams as the school year started.
As program manager, Matute meets with school administrators and coaches about the difficulties and concerns they have and offers the league's support. Those challenges include getting proper resources akin to the English debate teams, recruiting students, training coaches and finding judges.
He said everyone at the league is determined to help the students develop skills they will use throughout their lives, skills that Matute still uses today at his job, where he said everyone "wears 20 different hats" to keep the program running.
"It's good if it feels good working with a group of people who care so much," he said. "My respect toward BDL grew exponentially, and it made me appreciate it even more."
Just a few years ago, Matute thought he'd be working in a cubicle or lab for the rest of his life. But after falling in love with education, he has set forth on a new path.
At his core, Matute said, he's still a researcher. But instead of returning to physics, Matute said he wants to go back to graduate school to obtain a STEM education degree to focus on researching language and special education while continuing with the BDL.
He still wants to work with the BDL, which said it would accommodate his class schedule, to research and find evidence of the importance of debate, especially Spanish-language debate.
"The research has shown that bilingual kids tend to perform well when they have the right tools," he said of the BDL. "So I definitely want to do research on the impact of debate in the Spanish-speaking community and how [bilingual] debate has such a major impact on cognitive and learning skills."
As Matute moved through the Debate en Español program from student to coach to program manager, he found his voice and his passion. He is working to expand opportunities for Debate en Español students who, one day, might follow in his footsteps to become the next generation of coaches, teachers and league managers working to keep the program going for students like them.
