Week 6: Question Building, Observations, and Catering to an Audience
Hello and welcome back to my blog! This week I made some good progress towards my final project and was able to spend some valuable time at one of my sites.
At Holmes, we talked some more about camp and the next season, but their college counselors came into their class later in the week to start preparing them for their college application process, so I wasn’t able to work with them in class as much as in previous weeks. “Camp” is a 1-8 week intensive for debate program hosted by a university with a debate program. It is largely regarded as the fastest way to improve at debate quickly, and most top debaters attend one or more camps each summer. I advised one of their debaters on how to make the most of camp (in particular by personalizing research files given to all camp attendees to make them easiest to use during a round). I also met with my on-site advisor for Holmes outside of class time to iron out some of the details for the questionnaire students will fill out to help me answer my thesis questions. We determined that it would be best to have all the students in the class fill out the form. They have all competed in at least 1 tournament this year, so they will be able to answer all the questions even if they are not varsity/dedicated debaters.
At Heights, this week we began prepping lectures for next year. When talking with my on-site advisor, he expressed that he was at a bit of a loss with the lessons and PowerPoints given to him by the last debate teacher. We both agreed that the order of the content was logical, but that the PowerPoints were geared towards a lecture style class where the teacher uses the PowerPoint bullet points as talking points. This would have made sense for a debate teacher that has been in the debate community for decades, but not so much for a newcomer. Thus, we began to prepare lessons for the fall semester by filling in what we already have and making modifications as necessary. We ran into some technical difficulties trying to transfer the old lesson plans onto my laptop (it was a very large file), but by the end of the week I was able to access them all. I also sat in on the U of H professor lecture this week. He began lecturing on the K, and one of the varsity debaters also gave a bit of an impromptu refresher on debate terminology for the novice debaters since they were a bit rusty on some of the lingo.
A large fraction of my time this week was dedicated to finalizing the questions I will be having students answer. I decided on two sets of questions: one general set for both schools, and one shorter, school specific set. Students will receive all the questions at one time as if they were one set. This way, I can gauge some of the same metrics for both schools but still learn about some of the things that make each team unique. For example, I will ask both about their views on K debate but then ask Holmes only about whether they think a stock issues framework (most common in UIL) or a policy framework (most common in every other circuit) garners more educational debate since they are the only ones that learn both frameworks. I also decided to ask how many tournaments students have been to. I am not collecting names or any other identifiable information so this will help me parcel out how the amount of time people are in the activity affects their opinions. I expect that experienced debaters will provide rather nuanced answers to my questions regarding improving debate, but the debaters that compete less may also provide insight into why they don’t compete more when answering questions about perceived flaws in debate and tournament organizations that may be equally telling.
As for observations I made this week, I noted some comments and moments focused more on teachers. For example, I had a conversation with the Holmes mentor in which we talked about debate at large. He told me about how in the 80s and 90s, San Antonio high schools were amongst the most competitive in the country when it came to debate, placing top 5 in multiple events at nationals. Since then, programs have become much less successful although San Antonio is still somewhat competitive. It is not uncommon to hear people who have been in the debate community for decades to say that the activity is declining, but this was a fresh perspective I had not considered. Moreover, hearing his perspective about the educational value of debate and the emphasis he puts on college for his debaters was equally interesting. For the most competitive programs at top ranked high schools, debate serves to get students into a great college instead of a good one, but at some programs it serves to get students to any college. While I understood this to be true, hearing it from a teacher that promotes this yearly was valuable.
At Heights, observing the K discussion given by the U of H professor shed light on some of the struggles teachers may face when talking about debate to students. During the lecture, the professor aimed to provide an example of the structure of debates. He explained 3 parts of the K as the link (what assumption the affirmative makes that is problematic), the impact (why that link is bad), and the alternative (what to do instead of the aff that solves all the issues the aff does but avoids the K link and impact). The example he gave was a K about the language the aff uses. The link was some of the aff’s evidence using the pronoun “he” to refer to all people. He asked the class what they thought the impact would be, and their answers were generally something along the lines of erasure of people who aren’t men’s experiences and voices. He then asked for alternatives, and most answers revolved using different pronouns like “they” or “he/she”.
Although some students were able to give answers, I did not see the majority of them connecting with this example/giving the argument the same weight as other arguments they have learned during the discussion, and many students seem confused or disengaged. I suspect this may have to do with every other debate argument they have encountered being less intangible/rhetoric based and having large scale impacts like climate change or war. It also shows that there is a bit of a “thought bubble” when it comes to debate. An experienced debater would very likely understand this argument even if they haven’t ever used it or had it used on them because they are used to engaging arguments repetitively and strategically. Moreover, most high school classes don’t explore how rhetoric and language shape reality in the way that K debates do, which may explain the lack of connection students had to the idea of language leading to erasure. Whether or not this speaks to the degree personal beliefs influence debate (some students may have pre-existing beliefs about the weight that pronouns hold), or the degree to which debate influences the types of arguments people give weight (nothing makes debater think critically about an argument quite like losing a debate to it) is up in the air, I found it interesting that this argument in particular gave students issues. Although the professor is in no way at fault here (this is a perfectly plausible argument in a debate) this observation speaks to the importance of examples that meet students where they are at in terms of their debate experience.
Overall, I made some good strides towards my final product this week and I am looking forward to what students have to say when filling out the questionnaire! See you next week!