It became abundantly clear that the debate community suffered from a stark lack of diversity, with many inner-city and low-income public schools conspicuously absent from participation. This realization prompted us to delve deeper into how we could make debate more inclusive. We recognize the power speech and debate holds in transforming communication, critical thinking, and leadership.
Determined to create a free debate platform accessible to all youth, we have spent the past year launching Debate Discovery Kids (DDK), a curriculum tailored for middle school students. We crafted lesson plans brimming with accessible steps and engaging exercises, ensuring that debate concepts were presented in a simple, digestive format. We published a comprehensive workbook with chapters that correspond to lesson plans and have recently partnered with several schools in order to organize and facilitate debate workshops.
In essence, students come to our workshops and camps to learn the basics of speech and debate. This allows them to become confident leaders who will advocate for lasting change.
We have hosted two free week-long camps for middle school students (each camp had 15 hours of instruction). We connected with thousands of students (and directly taught dozens) and stressed the importance of communication. Due to our overwhelming success, we plan to host a free seminar for middle school principals and administrators to provide resources, curricula, and certified coaches and explain how to implement low-cost speech and debate programs. Recently, we have been awarded grants from the Dragon Kim Foundation, Civics Unplugged, and the National Contribution Project. Moreover, we have received a Certificate of Congressional Recognition from Representative Young Kim. Finally, we have used social media to spread the word.
You can participate in our in-person or online workshops and camps. Moreover, we are in the midst of developing an interactive website containing a video library of our curriculum, engaging quizzes to test knowledge and understanding, and a chat option so students can ask questions to our certified judges. Finally, schools with our implemented programs can participate.
