Few people talk more than Mario Herrera, Grady’s speech and debate coach, but most people don’t know the story behind his articulate nature.
Herrera developed an interest for speech and debate in the ninth grade. He quickly dropped out of baseball and basketball to join the speech and debate program.
After graduating from high school in Albuquerque, N.M., he attended the University of New Mexico for one year, but decided that wasn’t for him. He found himself interested in caring for elderly people, so he immediately got a job in long-term healthcare, specifically in Geriatrics.
“I liked helping people, not only patients, but fellow caregivers and the patient’s family,” says Herrera.
Herrera mainly worked at rehabilitation centers and nursing homes, and eventually he settled down with one company in El Paso, Texas. By that point, he was 25, and his job let him travel many places around the country like Indianapolis, Little Rock, San Antonio, and Coral Gables, FL. However, he started to retreat about four years later, due to the impersonal nature of the position.
“As I kept doing well and as I kept moving up that corporate ladder, I saw patients less and less,” Herrera said.
Herrera moved back to Albuquerque and got a job working at a Disney store, where he worked for around a year before he applied to UNM for the second time.
“Boy, did I love school this time,” Herrera said nostalgically, “ I was in the honors program at UNM [and I] wouldn’t change it for the world—absolutely wonderful education.”
During his moving around, there was one thing Herrera never stopped doing: coaching speech and debate. He coached at high schools in Albuquerque as well as El Paso.
After majoring in secondary education at UNM, Herrera was offered three jobs in Georgia: one in Fayette County, one in DeKalb County and one in Fulton County — at Grady —which he took.
Now, Grady’s speech and debate team has won the state championship seven years in a row, with the help of Herrera, along with teacher Lisa Willoughby and four volunteers, who are Lucas Bailey, an alumni for Grady, Susan Ramsey, staff at grady, Mary Villapando, a teacher at Grady, and Griffin Miller, a student at Emory University.
“He’s a really fun guy, first of all,” sophomore Joe Earles said. “He’s serious and makes us get work done, but it’s also really fun to do the work. He makes you analyze what you’re thinking a lot harder and makes you a much better thinker.”
In total, Herrera has devoted a successful 27 years of his life to coaching speech and debate.
“Debate is fun and it gives opportunities to students. I benefit professionally and I become a better teacher and it feeds my competitive spirit.”