Photo: Two teachers talk with John Meany

 

Posted by: Alfred Snider

 

Students are not the only people at WDI this summer. This week there has been a coach/teacher workshop so that teachers and debate coaches can learn more and prepare to do a better job for their students back home.

 

The workshop was directed by John Meany of the Claremont Colleges, one of the world’s most acclaimed trainers, along with other guest speakers.

 

The goal of the program is to meet the needs of each teacher, which can be challenging because different teachers are interested in different debate formats. This is accomplished by covering all facets of all debate formats but emphasizing their commonalities as well as differences. For example, organizing a high school debate team is much the same in different debate formats, so when I met with the teachers for a morning about that subject I was able to stress the organizational aspects that were common as well as delineate those that were different.

 

John brings a unique set of skills to this job, not just because of his knowledge of debating, but also his knowledge of the barriers that teachers encounter, the many resources available to them, and the particular challenges of making debate a valuable part of any school’s program through the integration of state academic standards into the promotion of debating. His work in southern California with dozens of school districts and hundreds of schools has given him a unique insight into what works to promote debate and what does not.

 

Teachers also received information on other topics that are extremely valuable, such as the legal issues debate coaches might face, the integration of debating with the local community so that support is broader, the use of specific lesson plans, review of recent books on the subject, and the review of countless lesson plans and innovative curricular materials.

 

At the end of Friday the teachers went out for a meal together and found that they had bonded as a group, and a number of them told me that this workshop had been everything they hoped for and that they were extremely satisfied with the instruction and the material. Each teacher also received cd-roms and DVDs of instructional materials on the debate formats they are interested in.

 

I hope they will all stay in touch and share their future successes.