News > October 4, 2007

By Lauren Wright | Contributing writer

The university’s debate team, ranked second in the country and first in district six, has launched a successful program during the past year to facilitate a new debate team at Paisley Middle School.

With new debate coach Ross Smith, the team is moving in a direction that will give the same kind of passion about debate that they experience to the next generation.

“Their (the kids’) excitement is very fulfilling because it shows that my work has given another person the opportunity to bring debate into their lives,” said junior Shawn Isinhue, president of the debate team.

Junior Tara Tedrow and Isinhue go to Paisley at least once or twice a week to instruct the students in a formal setting, where the kids are broken up into small groups and their weekly progress is monitored.

While the work is demanding at times and the students are practicing entirely new skills, this kind of extracurricular stimulation has improved the public speaking and communication skills of the middle school students and provided an invaluable outlet for their creativity.

Members of the debate team such as Isinhue said that they remember the middle school days when they were searching for a passion themselves, as they reflect on the importance of early programs like this that encourage students to explore their interests and challenge themselves. Students at Paisley attentively trained for the “Wake Forest Earlybird Tournament.”

They performed extremely well, especially considering that the tournament was their first moderated competition at the national high school forensics level, and that these students are still in middle school.

But through all the hard work and struggle to keep the class in order, the debate team has obtained an equal amount of knowledge.

“This experience has taught me patience and listening skills,” Ishinhue said.

He has also learned to balance the individual needs of the student with his occasional impulse to reference his point of view on a particular topic that the students are in the process of debating.

The opportunity that the debate team has brought to these middle school kids is an unadulterated source of joy and fulfillment that they cannot otherwise obtain from the academic curriculum, a situation characteristic of reciprocal learning in a new environment for both groups.

“Students love debate because their ideas are heard and challenged,” Smith said.

“They end up working harder and pursuing more research than they do in most classes. It’s really cool to hear students excited about finding a new article or answering an argument.”

The team also collaborated with WFDD last year to produce an election series for Forsyth County political candidates.

In addition, members of the university debate team have raised campus awareness by hosting a public forum about sex slavery.

The team is currently in the process of exchanging curricula with other schools similar to Paisely Middle School to sprout more young debate programs.