Tea Time Tuesday: Is speech and debate significant in students’ futures?

hi my name is shreya skinner and i'm a staff writer at the sidekick and this is tea time tuesday today i'm here with miss simon our chs debate coach and world history teacher we will be discussing the importance of debate and speech in the future my first question for you is why do you think students participate in speech and debate in high school well usually there's a bunch of reasons obviously some kids want to put on their college applications because debate can be something that's seen as prestigious but sometimes students just want to know how to communicate better maybe they were really shy in middle school and elementary school and they want to break out a little bit maybe they get really bad marks on presentations and they want to do better or they suck at research but they want to make sure that they actually know how to do it so they could do well in class and be educated in life and some people just love to argue and learn about the world all those are legitimate reasons to join debate the last one was one of my reasons for joining and actually why do you think communication is so important at a high school level and beyond well communication is important because it's something that we use to make sure that we're all on the same page if you don't know how to communicate then almost nothing is possible you communicate in projects you communicate when you are selling an idea you communicate when you're trying to tell someone you care about them communication is all around us so the earlier you learn how to communicate the more likely the things that you want in life are going to come to you because you know how to express that and grab them so when people learn about communication in high school especially since it's such a pivotal time in people's lives you're figuring out where you want to go to college you're discovering the things that you like being able to say i like these things and here's why or i want those things and here's how i'm going to do it is impressive and wonderful and allows for you to do a lot of different things definitely and i often find or found that with myself and even at like the high school level that communication can be very difficult sort of social sphere around us that kind of makes it difficult or makes you feel scared or anxious or nervous to communicate with one another and i think that debate helped break those stigmas down or break those fears down in myself absolutely yeah do you think that debate has like has the influence on a student to push them further in their professional careers oh absolutely i mean i definitely do not think that i would have gotten the chance to go to stanford which is a really wonderful school if i didn't do debate i wouldn't be able to feel as confident in those classes i wouldn't feel comfortable doing interviews i wouldn't want to communicate with people and so many people lose out on opportunities because they're not comfortable and they don't know what to do about that but debate forces you to be uncomfortable all the time because you have to think about multiple perspectives you have to go to tournaments almost every weekend you have to debate multiple sides and debate people you don't know in front of people you don't know it really throws you into the deep end so if you're doing that every weekend for four years why wouldn't you be able to do an interview right why wouldn't you be able to uh blow away the alumni who interviews you for the college that you want to go to it's always going to be a lot easier because you've been practicing it for as long as you've been in high school and if you could describe or sum up the importance or the influence of speech and debate in a student's life with one word what would it be [Music] opportunity right uh just like as i said you get so many different things because you put yourself out there so when you do speech and debate you open yourself up to opportunity whatever that can look like speaking better getting into a good college getting a good job whatever you want it to be yeah definitely and thank you so much for joining me for tea time tuesday you