“Are problems important because they affect us or because they affect a lot of people?” Bilal Butt asks 20 Middle Schoolers. “A bit of both, right?” In his Speech & Debate classroom, the mood keeps spinning on a dime: clamorous brainstorming about global issues turns into rapt attention as he lays out research techniques and acceptable sources for citations, which then transforms into buzzing focus as the class splits into teams, collaborating on eight-sentence paragraphs. “I heard someone say that they write more in this class than in English class,” he tells the students. “That’s a good thing — we’re trying to level up your writing.” In the 2023-24 school year, Butt was awarded the Cross-Divisional Inlustrate Orbem Award; the citation emphasized that his “care for our students and our school is unmistakable in his teaching” but “most visible in his everyday interactions with others.”

How did you get interested in speech and debate?

My sister. She’s five years older than me, so she did it in high school and I started in middle school with storytelling: I did a piece about a frog who was very vain — about his legs, particularly. Then he came to find out that frogs’ legs are a delicacy, so he ran back to everyone he was bragging to and said, “Just kidding.” At the end he was screaming “No, no, no,” and then he was like, “Wait — I have a beautiful voice,” so vanity caught up with him again. 

What were you like as a kid?

I was a very talkative, rambunctious kid. Speech and debate taught me so much about things that most students were not necessarily getting exposed to. I was talking about multilateralism and presidential primaries in a way that was more nuanced than the average 16- or 17-year-old. And that gave me a sense of confidence that was maybe arrogant. Now I want to be the kind of mentor that I didn’t have, or maybe I did have and I was too resistant to listen. I want to make sure that I reach some students to let them know that it’s okay to have ideas and to think you’re the smartest person in the room, but you’ll very often find out that you’re not.

Are you a better coach than you were debater?

Absolutely. I was in a program that didn’t really have a coach: there was an adult in charge with thousands of other responsibilities, so we were self-taught. We didn’t go to debate camp, but we were still pretty scrappy. I’ve learned so much about the technical aspects of debate that I didn’t even know existed when I was young. 

How so?

There are parts to an argument, much like there are parts to a car. The car parts have to fit together perfectly if you want to start the engine and drive away; your persuasive techniques have to combine into this packaged argument. Your claim, your warrants, your data, your impact: whether your audience member has experience in debate or not, it relates to them because those are always effective persuasive techniques. 

How does speech and debate bridge the gap between extracurriculars and academics?

The students who do speech and debate almost always perform better academically in the classroom. The amount of research and communication they’re asked to do on a weekly basis really enhances their skills. They’re always looking for information, synthesizing it, and then pushing it out in a compelling way. A Middle School mom told me, “I never thought I would have my student come home and be so excited to do more homework.” 

What’s something that people who aren’t involved with speech and debate get wrong about it?

That it’s only a bunch of kids arguing and wanting to be the loudest voice in a room. Listening is such an important part of speech and debate: most of the time in any round, you’re listening.

You’re married to Upper School English Teacher Megan Butt, who is the assistant coach on the Speech & Debate Team. To what extent do your home and work life blend into each other?

Not as much as you would think, but we do sometimes have to say to each other out loud, “I’m not debating.” If we’re talking about a dish in the sink, we don’t have to fall back into “this is wrong for these three reasons.” The sentiment can be more important than the semantics. Sometimes we get caught up in it, but we laugh about it after the fact.

How did you meet?

As rival coaches at a national tournament. I saw her reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and I wanted to know more about her interests. 

Does debate make students more contentious?

Our debate students are probably the most combative on campus. I think part of that is that they’re very inquisitive and they have a healthy dose of skepticism. We teach students how to argue, which sometimes wrongfully means that they're always trying to win the argument. When you’re talking to your family and your friends and your peers, sometimes it’s important to sit in the discomfort of knowing that we don’t all agree about something. In my classroom, I do a lot of stakeholder analysis with students so they understand that whatever I believe, there’s people on the other side who believe differently.

Tell us something you haven’t done yet in your life that you would like to.

Have children. Starting a family is really important to both my wife and I. We’ve been married about five years and we’re going through IVF right now. We teach so many children that aren’t our own, the idea of nurturing our own family is very appealing to both of us.

To what extent has the tendency to debate at high speed infected high school forensics?

Unfortunately, a lot. I hear students read 1,200 words in four minutes. I would say most listeners would prefer 600 to 700: debaters are cramming in as many arguments as possible into their allotted times to make it more difficult for their opponents while also giving them more depth. Most old-school coaches would argue that it does not provide more depth: it’s just sheer quantity. 

Students like to gamify debate in ways that aren’t always educational. It’s almost a philosophical debate about who should be the arbiters of the activity: should it be the students or the teachers? Fundamentally, it’s their activity and we’re guiding them — but sometimes it’s important to be educators and not just guides. We try to elevate the quality of what they’re talking about.