Fitting Middle School Debaters Into the Equation
posted by Jon Cruz on May 28th, 2007
Andy Charrier, coach of Lakeville North and South High Schools in Minnesota, sent me an e-mail, hoping to pose the questions therein to the community at large. Here is what he asked:
I am wondering if other coaches can share how middle schoolers fit into their larger debate program? I particular, here are some areas I’m wondering about:
1. Do you have 7th and 8th graders debate as part of the high school team or as their own school?
2. Do you have a middle school coach?
3. Do middle schoolers use funding from your high school budget or elsewhere?
4. Do you make any adaptations for middle school students? For example, do you create a separate practice time just for them?
Discuss!
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Posted from: 68.117.64.28
May 28th, 2007 17:11
The answers you give will help us build a decent proposal that I can give to our ADs — to them, the idea of a middle school feeder program makes perfect sense.
Andy.
Posted from: 65.3.168.216
May 28th, 2007 17:17
I’ve been working on a feeder middle school teams. Ranging from 6th to 8th graders. It originally started as a “Great DEbate” annually showcasing a modified Lincoln Douglas Debate, Public Forum and three on three and debate. This year I was working on shifting it more towards NFL standards and starting a continuous team that will be able to compete against other feeder schools and then high schools are recruiting from those pools. Basically when ever our high schoolers get security clearance (which is not often), we’d visit the school and coach the students, which we offer as community service to our team members. We have in schools sponsor which we’re in the process of training.
Posted from: 216.159.104.202
May 29th, 2007 06:40
We work with a middle school program separate from our high school program. Dowling Catholic graciously hosts the junior high state tournament each year in May. We begin working with our middle school kids in March after our state tournament. We work with them once, sometimes twice per week. The varsity speech and debate kids do a majority of the coaching, with speech and debate coaches on hand for supervision and to keep things honest.
We’ve found that just working with them for this one tournament is sufficient to get them pumped for the season when they start high school without burning them out too early. Most junior high kids can’t handle anything even close to the high school season.
I guess a better way to answer your questions is:
1. We have 7th and 8th graders competing only for the “state” junior high tournament as a separate school (sometimes, there are kids who express interest early, so they come over to attend practice at West and if they are really pumped and ready, they go to a couple of small local tournaments prior to the start of the ‘junior high season’).
2. We do not have a middle school coach. We have a liazon there who is a parent of a former West competitor, but the coaching is done primarily by our varsity speech and debate members.
3. Funding is done partially through an activities fund at the junior high, but mostly out of the money the kids contribute (we get the junior high to pay for buses and the entry fees and such are covered through the small fee we charge the junior high kids for attendance).
4. We definitely have a separate practice time for the JH kids. IF they want to start earlier in the season, then they come to our high school to practice with the novice level students in their event of choice.
Hope this helps! We love our JH program!
Cyndy
Posted from: 4.254.89.173
May 29th, 2007 08:38
The Junior High tournament Woodhouse speaks of is extremely cheap. We charge a fee per school - this year it was $10. That ten dollars enables you to enter as many students per middle school as you’d like. We don’t require a certain number of judges - bring who you can and we’ll cover the rest. We do it in order to have as many junior high kids compete so that the activity continues to grow. Sheaff is extremely dedicated to the growth of the activity which is why he hosts it for nearly free. We use the ten bucks per school to pay for trophies (doesn’t cover the cost) and use concessions to cover the rest. The kids love it.
Like West - Dowling students coach the junior high kids. Because Dowling is parochial and private our students are spread throughout a few counties so for it to work we send our kids to the different middle schools. A couple of the middle schools have added classes now for Speech and Debate (a “wheel” for like six weeks). Each site has a moderator who may or may not have any experience.
Our state league allows junior high kids to enter the state tournament. In the past when Sheaff had junior high kids enter the high school budget paid for it all.
Posted from: 69.120.236.168
May 29th, 2007 14:56
We invite the top 8th graders from the middle school that feeds into our school to a “Debate Seminar”. This seminar takes place in May and June, starting the week after states. I strongly suggest using a seminar- although the kids can’t learn much in 6 sessions (once a week), they still will be better off than most going into next year. Most of our debaters can already write cases. About 30 kids responded to the invitations this year and I can guess that we’ll have about 10 new LD debaters for next year, along with about 6 new PF debaters, which is pretty good considering we had a 9 person program this year and we’re only losing 1 senior. In the future, we intend to invite the kids earlier in the year, so they can observe tournaments and (hopefully) sign up for a camp.
Posted from: 128.135.219.153
May 29th, 2007 15:28
dowling does a really good job hosting its junior high tournament and both years that we’ve sent kids they’ve had incredible enthusiasm and a better understanding of the activity afterwards.
from my experience i find that middle schoolers need more encouragement to think independently, meaning that their most productive practices need to have clear lessons with well-defined goals. i usually focused on teaching one specific skill and then having them apply it on their own (research gathering, card cutting, argument writing, etc)
i also find that varsity debaters, for the most part, tend to make the best middle school coaches because they can bring a sense of fun to the activity that adults can’t. kids tend to hang around an activity because of a sense of trust and social inclusion that other students are best suited create. obviously not all varsity kids are going to be good teachers, but as long as they make the activity enjoyable plenty of kids will come back with at least some vested interest if not some useful skills.
Posted from: 216.162.91.75
May 30th, 2007 06:40
I started debating in seventh grade, doing impromptu that year and starting LD the summer between seventh and eighth grades. We didn’t have a seperate middle school coach and my practices were with the high school LDers, but we have a tiny team. the funding was the same and nothing was modified due to me being a middle schooler. I debated as part of the high school team in our local league.
Posted from: 205.221.233.32
May 30th, 2007 16:58
By the way - there were modifications to the events at the Dowling junior high tournament. We offered Impromptu, Duo, Extemp and Debate. Those were the only four categories students could enter in. For Extemp we gave students the questions ahead of time - for Duo they could use scripts - for Impromptu they were given topics ahead of time. As for debate - the structure is similar to a public forum round, the topic is similar to the upcoming policy topic. Sheaff designed it this way so it was a partner activity and so that any student who is doing any kind of debate could get something useful from it. Argument construction, etc. should be applicable to any type of debate. There were obvious divides though, to be honest, between teams coached by policy students and LD students … not saying it’s bad but just something to consider. The intent though is not for it to be a specific style; rather a universal approach so that kids can do any type of debate when they get to high school. Sorry that wasn’t put in the earlier post - just thought about it after reading Blaser’s post and the one about impromptu.
Posted from: 24.6.159.5
May 30th, 2007 19:15
Youth Forensic League (YFL) results for debate:
First Place from Egan (Coached by Daniel Moerner): Adron
Second Place Closeout from Blach (Coached by me): Ryan Khalessi and Rahul Patel.
Posted from: 71.139.43.20
May 31st, 2007 07:57
To clarify Daniel Khalessi’s post, MVLA Speech and Debate hosted its annual Youth Forensic League tournament yesterday. Students from the four feeder junior high schools met once a week after school on Wednesday in one of the following three events:
-7 minute OO
-Impromptu
-Spar (A shorter version of Parli without teams)
We work with them for a couple of months in the spring before the tournament, focusing on public speaking and a minor focus on argumentation (i.e. we discussed the social contract and categorical imperative in the Spar sessions).
This summer we are also planning on creating a short summer program under the direction of Natalee Pei, the new YFL director. At this moment it is in the planning stages, so I don’t have much more information to share.
Posted from: 128.135.219.121
May 31st, 2007 12:48
to build on schappaugh’s point:
the division between middle school debaters coached by policy and LD coaches makes competition somewhat awkward but still rewarding.
comparing experiences with my younger brother (who has a policy background and coached our middle school program this year), either style has its unique challenges to teach middle school kids.
the kids i trained were taught to write their own arguments and structure their cases to warrant fairly modest, intuitive claims. when they first saw policy-style card-intensive debate that impacted to nuclear war, they thought it was some sort of absurd joke. despite this, however, they had a really good time and did very well.
our middle school debaters did equally well this year with a clearly policy-influenced style, which i think is a testament to the quality of tournament that dowling runs and the educational benefits that kids willing to think critically get from debate in general.
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