by Isaiah McPeak | Feb 26, 2013 | Coaching
Recently, I got to run an event teaching adults (Toastmasters) to debate. I had only one training session, with adults who had never debated before. It was a great time to exercise restraint in teaching what debate is, at its core. Here is the presentation I used. The...
by Zack Voell | Jan 31, 2013 | Coaching, Tournaments
It is a fact that the first morning debate round of any tournament is not the debate that anyone wants their grandparents, friends, or parents to watch. Why? Because we are exhausted, and will not perform at our maximum potential. Or, in the words of Coach Jen (Jen...
by Kara Stivers | Dec 6, 2012 | Coaching
When I first joined debate, I remember my coaches were constantly touting the benefits of forensics for real life. They had past debaters come to our club and talk to us about how helpful the experience was for them. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t pay much...
by Rebecca Frazer | Nov 30, 2012 | From Intermediate to Advanced
I was not nervous. Sure, I was standing in front of several hundred people in the eleventh and final team policy debate round of the 2012 NCFCA National Championships. Yes, I was competing for a national title. Yes, I was negative against a case I had never remotely...
by Isaiah McPeak | Oct 19, 2012 | Coaching
If you’re from NCFCA RVIII, team names like “Stacy/McLeod” and “Downing/Lester” could possibly frighten you a tad. But what if those were the parents who squared off against the students in an evening where parents, debating like this for...
by Zack Voell | Sep 21, 2012 | Coaching, Communication/Rhetoric, Technique
“Humor has always played an important role in argument, sometimes as the sugar that makes the medicine go down. You can slip humor into an argument to put readers at ease, thereby making them more open to a proposal you have to offer.” Unfortunately,...
