A Speech-Less Class Finds Its Voice Again : Education: Five former students return to the Newport Harbor High drama department to teach program and revive the debate team, whose members will try to qualify for the state championship.

Several years after finishing college, Amy Tygart has gone back to high school.

There she is, roaming the same halls--sometimes in the same jeans--as she did as a teen-ager. By day, the 23-year-old Tygart manages a pediatrician’s office, but each Wednesday night she and four other former speech and debate champions return to the Newport Harbor High drama department and their beloved speech class.

Only now, they’re the teachers.

“It’s very strange. It’s like a parent and a child: Your parents, you don’t understand them and you think they’re geeks, but then you grow up . . . and you say, ‘Oh. . . .’ It’s like that! All of a sudden, I’m a teacher. I’m a geek!” Tygart said one recent evening as she tutored a girl who could be her younger sister. “A lot of the kids remind me of myself or of my friends.”

While Tygart and the other coaches were away at college, Newport Harbor’s longtime drama director died and the speech program died with him. The new drama director had other priorities that left her with little time for evening speech classes and weekend tournaments.

The school had no money to hire another speech coach, so for several years there was no team.

Then Gregg Schwenk, a 1986 graduate, visited his alma mater and offered to come in “every once in a while” to work on students’ speech skills during drama classes.

“Every once in a while grew to ‘Why don’t you take over the class?’ ” Schwenk recalled.

Three years later, enrollment in Schwenk’s evening speech class has jumped from eight students to 40 and the team is once again winning local tournaments, with some students trying to qualify for the state championship.

For the coaches, it is a mix of nostalgia and community service that keeps them coming back.

“I was sort of a nerd, I guess. I was not the most popular guy on campus by any means. (Speech) gave me a place,” recalled Mark Tygart, 26, Amy’s older brother and Schwenk’s former debate partner. “It gave me a social sense of identity that I really lacked.

“I’d like to think I’d leave high school sometime,” he said, laughing.

Mark Tygart, who, like Schwenk, works at a mergers and acquisitions firm, added: “But I have a certain amount of enjoyment in doing it. If you’ve been working since 8:30 a.m., you don’t want to go off and volunteer doing something you loathe.”

One recent evening during “class”--essentially a series of auditions, rehearsals and research sessions with people alternately sprawled on the floor, sitting in the halls or standing at makeshift podiums--the coaches seemed to have as much fun as the students.

In one corner, a girl is opining about the rise of crime. In another, another girl passionately recites a monologue about death. Upstairs, a full-fledged spar has broken out over whether students should be required to take standardized tests before receiving high school diplomas.

That’s SPAR, or “spontaneous argument,” a speech tournament category that tests articulateness and quick thinking through impromptu debate and cross-examination on an issue.

At tournaments, students compete in various events.

The fiercest battle is in formal debate, in which contestants prepare as many as 2,000 note cards on a single topic--this year’s is health care--and then have a short time to prepare arguments on a specific, narrower question.

Warm-up for debaters is a mock congress where students imitate lawmakers with speeches about bills and resolutions.

Other rounds involve dramatic or humorous interpretation of readings, or extemporaneous speeches about current events.

“I like debate. I can’t win with my parents--most kids can’t--but I can win with my friends,” said Ryan Simpkins, 16, champion of Wednesday night’s practice SPAR. “And even if you don’t win, you can still have fun. I love to argue.”

As more and more schools cut performing arts electives from their curricula because of tight budgets, the volunteer coaches are the only way to keep the speech program alive, school officials agree.

“Without them, the program would fall flat,” said Newport Harbor Principal Steve Pavich.

Of the district’s four high schools, only one other has a speech team--it, too, is coached by an alumnus of the program who serves as a volunteer.

Besides arguing, speech class builds self-esteem, teaches research and analysis strategies and develops skills critical to jobs, the coaches said. Students also keep up with current events and learn a lot of history from Mark Tygart, whom Simpkins called “a living World Book.”

For students, the after-school elective offers five credits, an extra grade and a perk on a college application.

“Speech was really a great thing for me, giving me a little more self-esteem, making me feel like I fit into a group,” said Amy Tygart, who, in addition to her job, is studying at UC Irvine to be a high school English teacher. “Even somebody who isn’t a champion speaker, someone who just improves a little in this class, it’s something that they’ll take with them the rest of their lives.”

Schwenk said he uses the skills he learned as a debater “every day.”

But never are they more pertinent than when he is standing at the front of the drama room, suddenly an authority in shirt and tie, trying to get the class to be quiet, take roll and give directions.

“We view this from time to time as our penance,” he admitted. “When our student turns to us and says, ‘I don’t have my homework,’ that’s getting back at us for all the times I didn’t have my homework.”