Ingredients for a Debate Program #
Coach & Stipend
Should be equivalent to other interscholastic coaches, such as athletics; sometimes tied to club advisor stipend, but administrators should consider time and responsibility traveling outside school.
Contest Calendar
Start small and reasonable. Perhaps one contest as practice, and the State contest for exposure to a wider, more diverse community of debaters from across Wisconsin. Weeknight Online Rounds of Debate festivals are free to WISDAA schools and have nominal fees for other schools. State entry fees are reasonable, and come out to $10-15/entry.
Resources
Having access to research sources is helpful. There are a number of debate-specific resources that can augment a team’s efforts in preparing on a topic.
Transportation
Weeknight Online Rounds of Debate do not require transportation! While eventually, we hope to support in-person festivals, for now, the only in-person event is our State Contest in April at UW-Madison.
Meet with your activities / athletic director.
Information Literacy Resources #
WISDAA fosters formats of debate that emphasize accessibility and underlying pedagogy. Debate meets all Common Core State Standards in English language arts as well as National Council for the Social Studies C3 Framework standards. Debate can be:
Videos on this page were produced as part of a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council to hold an Information Literacy Professional Development workshop for teachers at UW-La Crosse, October 2017.
