STARTING AND RUNNING A SPEECH AND DEBATE
TEAM
There
are three documents on this page:
·
Starting
and Running a Speech and Debate Team
·
Starting a
Program
·
Managing a
Forensics Program
STARTING AND RUNNING A SPEECH AND DEBATE TEAM
1. Create a Contact List
Get students’ phone numbers, addresses, and e-mail addresses. Then,
create a sheet with this information so that people can contact each other. Be
sure to respect people’s desire for privacy by not publishing information they
don’t want published.
2. Talk with your school about Logistics
--Find out how to reserve, the cost of, and get school vans and
buses
--Find out about school rules and procedures for having students
drive to tournaments
--Find out what your budget is
--Find out how to get money from budget
--Find out about your school’s rules and procedures for having
students miss classes for academic events like speech and debate
3. Recruit Students
--contact advanced placement and other teachers to hook up to kids
that show talent or that
would benefit from being in a public speaking class/debate
--give extra credit to students who get involved with the team
--encourage students in your own classes
--contact junior high/middle school kids coming into your high
school; see if you can get a mailing list
from your school district and mail information about your team to
them
--have a mini institute at the beginning of the year where kids
meet each other and get involved.
--have a showcase where your students present speeches and debate;
others see what your students are doing thus impressing parents, other
teachers, administration, etc.
4. Plan your travel schedule
--Contact your state or local forensics organization for a schedule
of tournaments in your area; if you don’t know what this organization is,
contact a coach at another school; call up the nearest high schools and ask to
speak to their speech and debate coach
--Schedule at least three tournaments each semester so your
students have enough opportunities; avoid scheduling more than two tournaments
on successive weekends or you will cause burnout for yourself and your
students.
BE SURE TO RESERVE VANS AND HOTEL ROOMS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
5. Setup your Budget
--Consider what your budget is
--Consider this as a good way to budget:
·
Think through how many debate teams and individual event entries
you will have at each tournament
·
Figure on paying about $10 to $35 per debate team ($50 to $150 for
national circuit tournaments)
·
Figure on paying about $5 to $20 per individual event entrant
·
Figure on paying about $30 for a school entry fee
·
You will need one judge for each two debate teams and six
individual entries at most tournaments. If you don’t have that many judges, you
will need to hire them at about $150 per judge.
·
Figure on paying about $70-100 for hotel rooms
·
Include the cost of using your school’s van, rental car.
·
Figure on about $10 to $15 per day food money
·
What costs will you require students to pay? For example, will
students pay for hotel rooms and food? If your budget is very small, how about
students pay for registration.
Also, consider photocopy costs, purchasing of books, etc. as you
develop your budget.
6. Prepare and handout a Team Tournament Guidelines document
Inform students what they need to bring to tournaments including
their debate materials, clothing and toiletries, etc.
Establish guidelines for expected behavior including curfews,
smoking, courtesy, etc.
7. Prepare and handout Trip Information Sheets
State when you meet to leave for tournament
State when you return (be sure to account for the typical one to
two hours late that most tournaments are)
8. Establish Good Relations with others at your School
--Work with the librarian
--Work with whoever is in charge of the Photocopy machines
--Work with your School’s Accountant
--Work with the person in charge of your extra-curricular activity
9. Promote your squad
--Send information to the person who sends out announcements
--Make sure your principal and other important decision-makers at
your school know when your students won trophies and other awards
--Have someone write articles for the school newspaper
--Encourage students on your squad to become part of your school’s
student government
--Consider publishing and mailing a newsletter to graduated
students; they might be willing to donate money or time to your team and they
are interested in how the team did
10. Going to host a tournament?
Contact me, Jim Hanson, and ask for the Star System. The Star
System provides documents and step by step tips you can use to run your
tournament smoothly. The Star System costs $5 which basically pays for the cost
of two 3.5 inch disks and mailing. You will need an IBM compatible computer
with Microsoft Word 6/95 or higher for Windows. Contact Jim at:
Jim Hanson
Rhetoric Department
Whitman College
Walla Walla, Washington 99362
hansonjb@whitman.edu
11. Team Parties
Its a good idea to have a beginning of the year; winter holiday;
and end of the year team party. This gets students together socially and helps
bond your team closer. Have students help out.
12. Returning from Tournaments
--make sure students have safe rides home
--handle expense report forms as soon as you can
--be sure to pay judges and other expenses as soon as possible
13. Fund Raising and building an endowment
for information on this see the next link on the Forensics Resources Web Page.
Here are
some issues to consider in establishing a program:
1.
Staffing
You would
need a person to coach the program. This entails instructing students, handling
budget and travel arrangements, taking students to tournaments and judging at
tournaments.
2.
Funding
A program's
funding depends on the level of involvement and size of the program. A small
program with about 8 students that did just debate and went to two or three
tournaments each semester would cost about $2,000. A moderate program with
about 15 students that did debate and speech and went to three or four
tournaments each semester would cost about $4,000 to $8,000. A larger program
with about 25 students that did debate and speech and went to four to six
tournaments each semester would cost about $8,000 to $15,000. The money goes to
pay for transportation, hotel, and registration costs. Programs that pay for
food money, photocopying expenses and that travel on planes obviously cost
more.
3. Time
Commitment
Speech and
Debate is a demanding activity. Tournaments usually begin Friday morning or
afternoon and end late Saturday night. For preparation, low-key programs engage
in about 5 hours of work each week and the time spent on tournaments. Highly
involved programs engage in about 20 to 30 hours of work each week in addition
to the time spent on tournaments. Coaches and students can establish the level
of commitment they wish.
4. Events
students can do
Students can
do three kinds of events, Debate, Individual Events and Student Congress.
In debate,
students can compete in Policy Team Debate or Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Policy
Team Debate involves debate on a topic chosen by the National Forensic League
(so everyone in the country debates the same issue). This topic focuses on
changing United States government policy. This year’s topic, for example, supports
a change in immigration regulations. Teams of two students debate the topic. At
each tournament, a team would debate in six preliminary rounds, and, if
deserving based on their win-loss record, would advance to elimination rounds.
Lincoln-Douglas Debate involves debate on a value topic. Most states use the
National Forensic League LD topic--though not all (I believe Idaho uses the NFL
topic). LD topics focus on value judgements. For example, an LD topic might be:
Resolved: That the political correctness movement unfairly stifles free
expression. Debates in LD are one student against another. In both kinds of
debate, the students express their arguments and attempt to convince the critic
that their side is stronger.
In
individual events, students can do a variety of events including impromptu,
extemporaneous, oratory, informative, editorial commentary, interpretive
reading, dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation and dual
interpretation. I have included rules for these events from our tournament--however,
each tournament slightly varies these rules.
Putting
together a program is not easy and it does require a financial and time
commitment. However, the benefits to students are great. I encourage you to pursue
the creation of a speech and debate team at your school.
Jim
Coaching Meetings Judging/Critiquing Practice Debates Leading/Facilitating Discussions Delegating Research Assignments where appropriate Writing coaching handouts Organizing coaching handouts Researching relevant topic issues Communicating to students upcoming tournaments Tournaments Choosing which tournaments to attend Judging Advising Debaters on strategy Driving Supervising students Miscellaneous Formulating student evaluation forms Administration Meetings Publicizing meetings Setting up meetings for beginners and experienced debaters Organizing meeting times and topic discussions Speech or Debate competitive or non-competitive Photocopying Tournaments Estimating yearly costs Arranging for travel accommodations Arranging housing/hotel accommodations Requesting tournament invitations Maintaining accurate records of past tournaments, student ballots, receipts from fundraisers Balancing Budget on a regular basis Miscellaneous Writing open memos requesting use of funds Obtaining adequate supplies Public Relations Recruiting Designing advertisements Posting advertisements (lecture halls, newspaper, email) Attending high school tournaments Fundraising Grant Writing (internal and external) Drafting letters to firms and former UW debaters Editing and Reviewing letters Petitioning UW Administrators Serving the Community Brainstorming new ways to serve the university and community Arranging projects aimed at serving the community public debates forum topic discussion Speech Workshop High School debate workshop Moderator for public debates/forum discussion Publicizing projects Miscellaneous Participating in faculty meetings Hosting tournaments for high school and/or colleges Creating debate squad newsletter Publicizing student successes Maintaining UW Speech and Debate Union Web Page
Thanks to Brian at the University of Washington for this outline.
Send Jim an e-mail if you
have other tips