2014 Coach Training Courses

General Information

The Chicago Debate Commission will offer two Coach Training Courses this summer, as it has for most summers throughout the league’s history. These courses are our most intensive, extended professional development opportunities of the entire season, and are designed to ensure that teachers emerge from them with considerably expanded capacity to teach and coach competitive academic debate, and thereby have a more successful and more satisfying 2014/15 debate season.

Both courses will offer CPDUs through the Illinois State Board of Education, through which the CDC is an approved PD provider. They will also each offer six hours of credit within the Chicago Debate League’s Professional Development System.

Both courses are designed for CMSDL coaches as well as CDL coaches. The MS and HS formats are similar enough, and their topics and many of their arguments are identical.

Both courses will be held at the location of the 2014 Chicago Debate Summer Institute, Westinghouse College Prep, 3223 W. Franklin Blvd.

Registration is free. Register by email to register@resources.chicagodebates.org by the deadline, June 30.

Course Descriptions

Fundamentals of Competitive Academic Debate Coaching – July 30th – August 1st, W – F, 9:00am – 3:30pm

This course is designed to introduce new coaches to the basic elements of competitive academic debate and to make them familiar with the essential components of effective coaching in the Chicago Debate League. The course is also useful for all relatively new coaches (with one to two years of experience) who want to solidify their comfort with and control over the fundamentals, including all of the Year One CDL Debater Development Benchmarks, as well as a solid introduction to the oceans topic and the 2014/15 Core Files.

Coaching Debate at the Varsity Level – August 4th – August 6th, M – W, 9:00am – 3:30pm

This course is designed to help debate coaches who feel comfortable coaching and teaching JV debaters move into the more advanced realms of Varsity debate. Kritiks, counterplan theory and competitiveness, advanced topicality debating, creating negative strategies, researching new cases – these are all on the agenda. We’ll also delve into the oceans topic, moving into and beyond the 2014/15 Core Files. We will not abandon the core of academic debate for rarefied realms -– rather, we’ll illuminate the connectedness between advanced skills and the essential pillars of refutation and the use of evidence. We’ll examine prepared flows on the new topic, closely analyzing refutation. And we’ll hear from recent CDL National Circuit debaters on the means they have used to gain competitive advantages, in preparation and in rounds.