Get the specifics of debate club
Find out how debate can build-up your student’s critical skills.
We started as a remote learning program but now we partner with all of the schools to provide in person debate programs after school.
Some of our programs are differentiated and some are not. If your school has a differentiated program, we would recommend your advanced student take the Advanced Program if they feel like they retained a lot from their past experience. If they don't feel that way, we think its appropriate for students to repeat, retake, or sign up for the Intro Program.
No! But we hope they will! Every session we have a few students who are unable to compete or don't want to. If they don't want to we'd love to have them observe.
First and foremost, students should sign up for the program offered by their district and please read the notes about which school students should attend to participate in each program. For safety and security reasons we cannot have students switch into other schools' programs just because of a scheduling conflict.
There are many debates during the course of the eight week program. We don't want parents coming to individual sessions but we do encourage parents to come watch their students compete in our end of program interscholastic tournament.
All of our classes introduce students to core skills and concepts. If your student is an 8th grader, we recommend they take a Policy class. Policy is the most competitive high school debate event. Some students love it and some students prefer other events. If students think they want to compete in high school, finding out if they want to pursue Policy Debate - or different events - can be valuable.
Parliamentary and Policy are different debate events, meaning they have different rules, structures, and topics. Parliamentary usually has teams of three, while Policy has teams of two. We recommend Parliamentary debate for students in sixth and/or seventh grade, and we recommend Policy debate for students in seventh and/or eighth grade. We think that all debate events have value in helping students enjoy debate. Parliamentary debate is an event that was created to be the most accessible for students but it is not an event students can compete in at high school. Policy Debate is not the most accessible but it is the most competitive high school debate event. If students think they want to compete in high school, finding out if they want to pursue Policy Debate - or different events - can be valuable.