Debate

The boys and I have attended a few debate tournaments this year as part of their Intro to Debate class, which they took this last winter. We were also at the tournaments to cheer on Lydia and Abigail, who were actually competing this year as a team. The boys learned the intricacies of timing debate rounds whereas I learned how to use up every extra synapse in my brain serving as a debate judge! It required incredible brain power!! Here are the boys during the February CLASH tournament, discussing a round they had just observed.

The resolution for the STOA team policy this year has to do with environmental policy, so the intro class used that as their topic as well. During the last two class sessions the students had practice debate rounds. John paired up with Zach Cunningham to put together an affirmative plan that involved replacing coal energy with nuclear plants across the country. They worked hard for a couple weeks researching, writing their speeches, and practicing together. Joshua teamed up with Joshua Cunningham to argue the negative perspective against their case. What fun to have the two teams of brothers competing against one another!

During the last week, the two Joshuas presented their case which had to do with restricting shark fishing off the U.S. coasts. Katrina and Kaci were on the negative team.

John & Zach played negative against the Broker brothers, Sean and Eric, and their affirmative plan about cleaning up the litter on the beaches.

At the end of each debate, the class voted for which team they thought had won the round. Then they received the invaluable feedback from their amazing teacher Katie.

The final tournament before Nationals was to occur during the Baja Missions Trip, which both Lydia and Abigail were going to attend. Since the girls couldn't attend the tournament, we had a fun evening in March instead with a potluck and then a video one of the girls' rounds at the CLASH tournament. No one but the girls knew the judge's ruling, so after watching the video we all discussed how we thought the round had gone. To no one's surprise, the girls had won their event!

Future speech and debate students...