Posts Tagged ‘Urban Debate’

This is the conclusion of a trip report, the first part of which can be found here, from a high school debate tournament at which I recently volunteered. I founded the Boston Debate League in 2005 to bring competitive extracurricular debate to students at some of the city’s more troubled public high schools and continued to serve as the part-time, volunteer executive director for several years. In 2008 we hired a full-time executive director who has grown the organization into something much larger and more influential. He was out of town this weekend receiving an award from his alma mater for this excellent work and asked me to fill in for him at the tournament, which I was more than glad to to.

Round 3

Saturday morning proves far more hectic than anticipated. There’s a surprising amount of turnover, meaning students who competed last night but who if they plan on coming at all today have not arrived as of 8AM. Frustratingly, I’m not getting good information from coaches about which of their students have not showed up.

I am used to leading by moral authority. When I ran the BDL, the coaches and students all saw how hard I worked, and most of them knew that I wasn’t paid. I more or less shamed them into making my job easier and doing what I told them to do.  Read the complete post...

I reported back in June that for the first time ever an Urban Debate League team won the National Forensics League Grand Tournament, the largest of three high school debate national championship events. The Chicago Debate League, with the help of the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues, was able to parlay that into an opportunity to meet the president and other notable lawmakers, many of them former debaters themselves! Pictured here are the championship team of Misael Gonzalez and Kevin Hirn, flanking the president, plus the other two top speakers at the Chase Urban Debate National Championship and several urban debate leaders from around the country. Brag: the men at either end of the group are both on my WSOP e-mail list, meaning that they are early readers of the material that becomes my 2+2 Magazine trip reports.

It wasn’t the Boston Debate League, but a team from our sister league in Chicago recently won the National Forensics League Grand Tournament in Kansas City, making them the first Urban Debate League team ever to win a national championship (there are several- the NFL’s are the largest, though arguably not the most prestigious). The Chicago Debate League was one of the first UDL’s in the country and is considerably older and larger than the BDL. The winning team hails from Whitney Young High School, which actually had a debate team even before the CDL got off the ground.

Not that I can take any credit for this victory, but I worked with the CDL for several years while I was in college. In fact, it was a formative experience that led to my starting up the BDL when I moved to Boston. Even absent that personal history, I’d have to say that this is a very impressive accomplishment that hopefully will pave the way for more UDL success on the traditional debate circuit in the future.

Pictures and press release available here.

Sorry it’s been quiet for the last few days, Emily and I have been camping in the White Mountains with very limited internet access and no poker playing. I’m about to start a session now though so hopefully I’ll have some good fodder for some more posts.

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who donated to the Boston Debate League. I promise I’m not about to turn this into a “pledge drive” blog, but it was a unique opportunity, and I appreciate your patience and your generosity.

At least one commenter mentioned frustration with the donation site’s request for personal information. That was the site we had to use for the “March for Goodness” competition, but you are always welcome to make donations by PayPay, credit card, or check through the Boston Debate League website. It will no longer count towards the contest, but it will still go towards a very good cause and make me very happy!

Today’s the last day of March and the last chance for you to help out the Boston Debate League in its March for Goodness competition. This is an organization that’s near and dear to my heart, and if you’ve enjoyed and/or profited from this blog, a $10 donation is a great way to say thank you. If we secure the most distinct donors of $10 or more, we stand to win $10,000!

Please donate here, right now!

I’ve got another story for you today about the power of debate, this one actually from a similar organization that I worked with in Chicago before I founded the Boston Debate League. I was a junior at the University of Chicago: white, reasonably well-off, over-educated, and sheltered. I grew up in a solidly white, middle-class suburb of Baltimore and, aside from a few summers working at a 7-11 and a year of volunteering in the Chicago Debate League, I had very little experience interacting with people from backgrounds different than my own.

I’d just gotten a job as an assistant coach in the CDL and had been assigned to Orr Academy, an under-performing (to put it mildly) high school in Chicago’s Harlem. As the name suggests, the neighborhood was virtually all black (the only white person I ever saw on the streets there was selling pornographic DVD’s out of a briefcase) and economically depressed.  Read the complete post...

Big thank you to everyone who’s contributed to the Boston Debate League so far to help us get more unique donors for our “March Goodness” competition (details here). If you enjoy reading this blog, and especially if you feel like it has helped to make you money, please donate to the Boston Debate League using this link. With as little as $10, you will make my day and contribute to an incredibly valuable program for young people who badly need and deserve such opportunities.

I want to share with you the story of one of the first BDL students to really make an impression on me. “Angela’s” school didn’t join the League until her senior year, so she only had one year to compete, but she really tore it up. She steamrolled the Novice division in her first tournament, won first prize, and immediately moved up into the Varsity division. She won two tournaments in the Varsity division that year and ended up taking second place in the City Championships.  Read the complete post...

The Boston Debate League’s Fifth Annual City Championships took place over the weekend, and it was a great event. Nearly sixty students competed, which is actually a little low compared to the numbers we’ve had recently, but their enthusiasm more than made up for it. In the Varsity division, the reigning City Champions narrowly defended their title against a very promising upstart team. Meanwhile, a young school found a much-needed morale boost by closing out the JV division (that is to say, they won first and second place).

The BDL also got its first mention, and a fairly substantial one at that, in the Boston Globe, the city’s most prominent daily paper. The reporter did a nice job speaking with a variety of students, coaches, and administrators, and ultimately presented two of our most important themes: that debate is a rigorous academic activity that students nonetheless enjoy, and that it attracts all types of students, not only those who are already high achievers.

The credit for this goes to my girlfriend, who diligently reached out to nearly one hundred contacts at a wide variety of news outlets. Thanks, Em!

The Boston Herald ran an article this morning about the Boston Debate League and one of its member schools which was nearly closed by the school district:

The debate team at the Academy of Public Service sailed into the “elite eight” last year at the national championships in Chicago.

Now, thanks to that oratorical success, the debaters have talked their way into another year of funding as their school merges with the nearby Noonan Business Academy in Codman Square.

“The output of the debate team was a big part of the decision,” said team coach Locksley Bryan. “They saw these kids doing academic calisthenics at a very high level and it impressed them.”

The backstory, as I understand it, is that several years ago the Boston Public Schools received a multi-year, multi-million-dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support a transition to small schools. The grant funded the dissolution of Boston’s large public high schools into multiple small schools sharing a single building. Thus, what was Dorchester High School became three schools within the renamed Dorchester Education Complex: Tech Boston, Noonan Business Academy, and the Academy of Public Service (APS).  Read the complete post...