Tommie Lindsey Jr. doesn't let his students off the hook as soon as the bell rings.
"No matter what you do," Lindsey said at the Brodie Family Lecture on Thursday, "class is never dismissed."
While many students in disadvantaged areas fall behind their peers in school, Lindsey taps their potential, turning them into award-winning debaters and students, thus priming them for success throughout their lives.
Lindsey recently won a MacArthur Genius grant for his work at James Logan High School in Union City, California, as a debate coach.
According to Lindsey, his interest in teaching began in sixth grade, when he realized that teaching was about "being able to give."
After he graduated from college, he said that he felt a "calling back to the classroom," and began to teach in a juvenile detention center, where he learned the importance of a community among students.
Lindsey was later offered a job at Logan High School in Union City, and has been teaching there since 1988. He built the forensics team from nonexistence to one of the best in the country.
Under Lindsey's tutelage, the Logan High School forensics team has won numerous awards. A member of the team has won the California State Championships five out of the last 11 years, and they won the School of Excellence Award from the National Forensics league all eight years of its existence.
But beyond winning trophies, the most important aspect of Lindsey's message is for his students to apply what they learn in forensics to whatever other endeavors they attempt.
Lindsey also inspires his students to give back to the community through forensics, telling his students that they should reward his efforts by becoming "a voice for the voiceless."
His efforts as a coach cause Lindsey's students to excel in other areas besides debate: For many of them, their grades improve, and 95 percent of them attend college, compared to 40 percent of the rest of the school's population.
Michael Josi, former student of Lindsey's and current sophomore at Harvard College, elaborated on Lindsey's influence, stressing the power of "what speech and debate can do for anybody."
Summarizing the mission statement of the Logan High School forensics team, Lindsey said that he and his students do not learn the art of rhetoric to win tournaments, rather, "we do forensics to win everything else."