One of the big parts of my job this year was to work with
the forensics (speech and debate) team for our school. Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a nerd… it’s hard to
break away from it all, though! In fact,
I think this year marked my 10-year anniversary of beginning speech-related
activities! Crazy.
Anyhow, the program in Greece shares many similarities to
that in Minnesota. I have never done
debate, but I found some striking similarities to mock trial, so it really felt
like a natural bridge to cross. We had
around 60 high school debaters that I worked with at different points
throughout the year, as well as a group of 16 middle school students that I
worked with for about two hours every Tuesday.
Oh yes, middle school students in a class-like setting after a full
school day. That brought back all kinds
of great memories.
I also worked with the speech portion of the team,
specifically with persuasive speeches. These
kids were fun to work with, taking on topics such as poverty, privacy, perfectionism,
phones, and many other. All of this
culminated with the Panhellenic Forensics Association Tournament, hosted at our
school for teams from 18 schools across the country. This four-day tournament and the planning of
it kept me at school late into the night in February and March, but it paid off
in the end. We won the team trophy, and
we were the only school with finalists in every event! Not too bad!
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