About Me

  This is my 36th year at College of the Desert teaching Speech and English.

   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, 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 Bernardine Bracero, one of only 250 members of the Thompson Tribe in the Northwest. She was in my Sophomore English class, always immaculate with a feather entwined in her hair -- but she was very, very shy. I asked her to join our Speech team. In the next two years, she worked hard, 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.