BRONX HIGH SCHOOL OF SCIENCE PHOTO/Jon Cruz is director of his school's Speech & Debate team.
Hearing “Don’t do that” can be a crushing blow to an undergraduate student discussing his or her longstanding goals with a trusted professor. When Jon Cruz heard those words, he was a student at Vassar College who dreamed of going on to pursue his Ph.D.
As an only child growing up on Great Neck, Long Island, Cruz had loved history, and participated in his high school’s speech and debate team. He went on to Vassar, where he started a newspaper column reporting on historical highlights of his beloved school. He imagined he’d become a history scholar.
But a blunt professor threw a wrench in his plans. “She felt I would be unhappy with a career in academia because I wouldn’t be able to focus on a single task—writing a dissertation, for example—for as long as I would need to do so,” Cruz recalls. “This seemed insulting. She suggested I be a high-school teacher (instead).”
Cruz had never considered following in the footsteps of his mother, an ESL teacher. (His father, who immigrated to the United States from Spain before Jon was born, drives a delivery truck.) But that professor’s advice had a profound effect on Cruz.
Ultimately, his high-school passion—debate club—helped him land a job. Nine years ago, fresh out of college, Cruz was hired to direct the Speech & Debate Team at Bronx School of Science. He went on to become certified in teaching, and now teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics with Economics, in addition to directing the speech and debate team. In 2013 the National Speech & Debate Association named Cruz National Coach of the Year.
Getting there: Cruz lives in Manhattan, where he’s wanted to live since he was a boy. His job in the Bronx is an hour’s commute from home. “I love where I live and I love where I work, so the commute isn’t too bad, especially given that most of it is on the subway, where I can multitask,” he said.
Class action: Once he arrives at school, Cruz teaches four 40-minute sections of AP U.S. Government and Politics with Economics each day, while his fifth-period class involves working with the Speech & Debate Team officers. The school de-emphasizes lectures, he said, so in classes he tries to instill in his students a passion for the subject by reviewing primary-source documents with them. “Since I teach government and politics, and I have a massive collection of Americana and political memorabilia,” he said. “I find that having my students work with vintage political advertising—brochures, campaign buttons, and the like—makes the study of government more real to them. When I am not using an object from the past, I find that projecting images helps set a scene for a lesson.”
Political science: Leading and managing the speech and debate team’s 300 students is a job in and of itself, Cruz said. There’s a science to debate preparation: team members spend hours creating responses to counter their opponents’ possible arguments and fine-tuning their answers until they are unconventional, rather than wasting time during the debate using the likeliest arguments.
In addition, he added, “my students read background information on the topics without looking for evidence to quote. The more general background they have on the topic, the easier it will be to find holes in the logic of their opponents.”
Recent topics they’ve argued include “Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction when the two are in conflict,” “Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified” and “The United States federal government should substantially increase its economic engagement toward Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela.”
The team—which under Cruz’s direction has grown to include more than 300 students—often travels to compete in debates, most recently performing extremely well at the Harvard National Invitational in Cambridge. Cruz said traveling makes it difficult to find free time outside of work, but he’s getting better at it. “I’m trying to involve my colleagues in the great subculture of speech and debate, both so my students’ other teachers understand what is causing them to sometimes sign out of class, and so I can have additional adults at tournaments so I can take a weekend off at least once a month.”
The art of teaching: To be a good teacher, one must first be knowledgeable about his or her subject area, Cruz said. “It is true that being an expert doesn’t automatically make one a good teacher, but one needs to have a knowledge base in order to be a great teacher.” Other important skills include adaptability (“The best-planned lessons will evolve class to class because students will steer the discussion in ways one may not have anticipated.”), empathy (“My students aren’t just my students; they are real people with real needs, and they are real people with real personalities. The more I can relate to what their needs and personalities are, the better my in-class interactions will be with them”), and community spirit (“If one isn’t active with the school community at large, then there has been a failure to understand the degree to which learning outsides occurs the classroom”).
So, does he ever wish he’d ignored his professor and gotten his Ph.D.? Never. In fact, he says, in retrospect, the conversation with his Vassar professor was one of the best things that’s ever happened to him. “I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Really,” he said.
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