Congratulations to DiCo! Awarded the Brother Sterner Lifetime Service Award !
DiCo is a proud alum of Stuyvesant High School (‘03) and was thrilled to spend this past semester teaching U.S. History and helping his Speech & Debate Coach Julie Sheinman coach the team. The National Speech & Debate Association named him a first-diamond coach in 2019 and now, awarded him the Brother Sterner Lifetime Service Award in 2022. DiCo hopes to return to Stuyvesant after taking some time off from teaching to work full time for the Brooklyn Debate League building more Speech & Debate programs in NYC public schools.
K.M. DiColandrea, better known as DiCo, is many things: a child of an immigrant, a first-generation college student, a die-hard New Yorker, a queer and trans person, a convert to Judaism—but first and foremost, DiCo is a teacher. After graduating with a degree in Philosophy from Yale, DiCo has made a career of establishing and coaching nationally ranked Speech and Debate teams. His latest project, the subject of an internationally viral story in Humans of New York, is the Brooklyn Debate League, which he founded in 2017. From humble beginnings, the Brooklyn Debate League has become a resounding answer to the endemic inequality of the Speech and Debate world, raising over $1.3 million in the wake of recent media attention. (photo courtesy of Ms. Sheinman)
