Entries by David

IMPORTANT: We need signed student research releases at T4 ($10 reward!)

This academic year, Dr. Briana Mezuk and the University of Michigan will be researching the impact of debate on student achievement and growth. She will be analyzing growth in a broad spectrum of areas: academic achievement, assessments, school engagement and social-emotional skills including resilience, self-efficacy, and social connectedness. That research will analyze data from multiple sources, […]

Upcoming evening coach PDs – earn your $100 incentive!

When: January 11th and January 24th, 5:30 – 7:30 pm Where: North Park University, Johnson Center, 5141 N Christiana What: Program Building and Recruiting (January 11th) and Post-Tournament Preparation (January 24th) We are excited that our own Marquis Ard, a nationally recognized college debate champion and veteran debate coach, will be leading a couple of exciting, […]

Demo Debate PD

Demo Debate and Digging Deeper into the Core Files (with Marquis Ard) Join the CDC’s Marquis Ard as he leads you through a demonstration debate using the Core Files and helps to answer questions about the format and structure of good debate, the use of refutation in debate, what to do during the rebuttals and […]

New Coach Mentoring Sessions start 11/29

Attention newer debate coaches! Want some perspective on how to manage being a debate coach with being a busy teacher from veteran coaches? Want to learn how other teachers learned the sometimes esoteric language of debate? Want to get advice on how to reach your students with what they find most challenging? Come work with two […]

U. of Kentucky scholarship deadline Dec. 1st!

University of Kentucky has multiple up-to-full-tuition scholarships targeted to graduates of Urban Debate Leagues and a strong interest in CDL debaters. Recent CDL alums like Maria Sanchez (Northside), Stephani Lopez (Phoenix Military), Marcel Roman (Whitney Young), Veronica Martinez (Ogden), Jacinda Rivas (Whitney Young) and Josh Kendrick (Kennedy) have received full-tuition scholarships to debate at UK. Current […]

3 Tournament Goal – Swag!

Now that our students are officially debaters, remember that our goal for each debater is to attend at least 3 tournaments. We have swag for each of the first 3 tournaments to reinforce this goal – debaters who attend their first tournament get one of our famously quirky buttons: For their second tournament, debaters will […]

New Research Studies Being Done on CDL This Season

This academic year, Dr. Briana Mezuk will be researching the impact of debate on student achievement and growth. She will be analyzing growth in a broad spectrum of areas: academic achievement, assessments, school engagement and social-emotional skills including resilience, self-efficacy, and social connectedness. That research will analyze data from multiple sources, including student surveys and observation. […]

Coach Kick-Off Event – Thursday, 9/28

Our Coach Kick-Off Event is on the calendar! Thursday night, September 28th at Baderbrau, 2515 S. Wabash, 5:30 – 8:30 pm (walking distance from Chinatown, McCormick Place and the CTA and seriously beloved on Yelp – 4.5 stars!). We’re inviting all of our coaches and a plus-one to attend and have some food and beverages on us and community with us. This is […]

Announcing the 2017 Allstate Varsity Invitational

We’re very excited and thankful that Allstate is once again sponsoring a premier tournament featuring 20 of our best Varsity teams from all of our conferences on the Allstate campus in Northbrook this fall. We’ll also continue our tradition of having great lunchtime interactions with Allstate attorneys and executives about pathways to professional careers. Here are the details: *Schools may nominate up to 2 […]

Get (re)introduced to our staff

As part of our push for growing the nation’s largest and best urban debate league, the Chicago Debate Commission has expanded its dedicated, dynamic program staff. Here’s some information about two new hires we’re excited about: Marquis Ard, Program Officer for School Support Marquis was born and raised in Chicago and has become one of […]