Returning the favor of society can be challenging to many, but not to the Jesuit Debate team. They decided to pay it forward recently with their middle school workshop event on Saturday, October 8th. Dozens of underprivileged students from Dallas Independent School District schools attended the workshop to develop their rhetorical skill and prowess, an area in which our debaters so proudly perform. The Debate team also hosted scrimmages for the freshman novice debaters, of not just Jesuit, but also Greenhill, St. Mark’s, Highland Park, and Guyer High School.
Both volunteers and debate team members staffed the workshop, serving as moderators who supervised classroom activities and provided the lessons. Sophomore Jack Griffiths ’19 commented on the activities he instructed and moderated. He thought that the students he coached “were very clear, professional, and perceptive, despite it being their first time. These students entered the debate world with skillfulness, and it’ll be exciting to see what the future holds for them.”
Fighting with an intense vigor, our Jesuit novices managed to achieve one victory each, a feat hard-earned against the formidable schools that they competed against. The novices surely received great experience, and hopefully lost some of the nerves that new debaters often deal with. Jesuit Freshman Debate certainly holds a promising future.
The workshop incorporating middle school students did not start at Jesuit, but is rather part of a larger movement, the “Urban Debate Movement.” Dr. Tracy McFarland, a Jesuit Debate coach and board member of the Dallas Urban Debate Alliance, organized the “DUDA” event. She explains that DUDA is an organization founded “to bring debate into underserved schools in DISD.” She also explains that the urban debate movement involves viewing “debate as a method of increasing literacy rates and matriculation rates – the studies on its effectiveness are profound.”
Debate team members and volunteers split into groups of three moderators, and each group taught a small collection of students. Then, they received coaching on the basics of argumentation and evidence analysis, two fundamental elements of debate. After a session of teaching, each group participated in a practice debate moderated by volunteers. According to Griffiths, these promising students “entered the debate world with skillfulness, and it’ll be exciting to see what the future holds for them.”
An exciting Saturday for an exciting year. The volunteers offered a tremendous service to the Dallas community, and provided a forum for not just the novice debaters of Jesuit, but for the other high schools Jesuit Debate regularly competes against. That Saturday, Jesuit Debate gave back.
