Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Debate class as opinions staff?



I started my day today a little on the grumpy side. I had made the mistake of checking my email in the middle of the night and discovered a troublesome message from my principal. I found out that in addition to teaching journalism and senior English next year, I will have to teach a section of debate. Needless to say I never fell back to sleep last night.

"What the hell? I don't know the first thing about teaching debate," I grumbled to myself.

I predicted that I would be a little agitated for the rest of the day, but Sarah Gassen's session about opinion writing was all I needed to perk up a bit. I know very little about teaching debate, but I can already tell the tips and tricks Gassen provided in her session will be relevant to my future work. This brought me to the thought: Can I make my debate class function as an opinion staff?

My favorite Gassen tip was to require students to keep an idea folder. I can see myself expanding this into a full-blown portfolio project!

Thanks to Glassen I feel a lot more confident tackling a subject area I know little about.

Elaine Broussard
Belle Chasse High School
Belle Chasse, La.

1 comment:

  1. Your application of your principal's suggestion could be interesting. As you know, USA often uses two contrasting views of the same issue on its editorial page. Perhaps you and your students can do the same.

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