About Me

   This is my 36th year at College of the Desert.

    I've always enjoyed challenges, and the challenge in each class is starting over with new students and helping them increase their self-confidence as speakers and how they use that quality in different settings, from getting jobs from their interviews to Speech and Debate teams meeting various levels of success. I've coached 14 state champions in Washington and California, three National Champions, and was named National Coach of the Year twice.

     Now that's nice and fulfilling, but let me tell you about one of my Seattle-area students, Bernardine Bracero, one of only 250 members of the Thompson Tribe in Western Canada.

     Bernie was in my Sophomore English class, always immaculate with a feather entwined in her hair -- but she was very, very shy. So, I recommended she join my Speech Team the next year, which she did. It helped that I am part Native American (Cherokee and Catawba), supported Native American youth at Portland and Seattle Indian Youth clubs, and tutored at three different Indian Schools.

     In the next two years of her high school life, she worked hard on Prose and Poetry Interpretation, never getting into any Finals UNTIL -- her last tournament, in which she made the Finals and received a trophy.

     The day before graduation, she came running across campus and said, breathlessly, "Mr. Walker, last night at the Indian Youth Club, some people wanted to close it down. But I  got up and spoke against it!"

     She now had the ability to stand up for herself.. That was greater than any of the awards I personally received. She went from very, very shy to being a positive participant in her own life. 

      That example really says all you need to know about me and how much I'll help you succeed in being a successful communicator.