Reflections on teaching public speaking and debate

I'm not exactly sure what to do with this page, but I thought I would do this as a starting point. Welcome to the Thursday, April 10th edition of the post pedagogy post game pedagogy report. I'm Dr. Steve. You know, I just taught two classes in a row. Let's see what happened in the Pedagogy Perfection League. The only restriction on this report is I'm leaving my office right now, and I'm walking to my car. By the time I reach my car, I need to be done or the podcast ends. Let's get into it.

The first class was public speaking, which went pretty well. We had a number of interesting speeches. The students are getting a lot better with using the time, speaking slower, and relating more conversationally to the class. It's going perfectly. I don't think I have—I think I even only have one or two speakers who still continue to think that public speaking is a listing of facts or a "good evening, ladies and gentlemen" kind of thing. We're seeing things that are really funny and have good comedic stuff. One was about the difference in driving in Maryland and New York and how terrible New York drivers are and how she can't bring her car here, but then she's dependent on the Uber and hates Uber. We had a great speech on stereotyping and pop culture and how that's changed over time and how stereotypes are complicated and how difficult they are to get around. I thought it was a good speech on the necessity of having hobbies for your mental health and career development. We had a speech about a skateboarding legend whose name was—no, damn. I thought I was gonna never forget the guy's name, but I have forgotten it. It's about a skateboarding legend who created a lot of tricks, and that speech was really well done. I kind of wish I had filmed all the speeches today. That would have been really great. But hindsight is indeed 2020.

So after speech class, I went to my debate class, which is quickly becoming the worst class I've ever taught at St. John's University. Hands down. It's even worse than that public speaking class where the children of the corn just kind of sat there and didn't play with their phones, just stared at me and did nothing. They did no speeches, they did nothing, and failed. And then they were crying about it. I just don't understand. But anyway, okay. Well, maybe that class is worse. The debate class—there are some people in there who are really, really, really great, but it's all just kind of like—I don't know. There's something off with the vibe. The class is not good. The people are good. How about that for a way to save a lot of negative things I said there? Anyway, today predictably, the group that was supposed to go today had not met and not prepared and not researched, and I even determined a topic. I had to have an extra person come off the bench from the back to out of the class to be the fourth because somebody didn't show up. So, I don't know. It went much, much better. I thought I didn't record the debate because I thought I was gonna be trash, but I should have recorded it because it turned out to be really good. It could have been better evidence, but they only had about 20 minutes of research. So it turned out to be a pretty good debate on school uniforms.

One of the things that debate students have a lot of trouble with in the class level is connecting speeches together. They never refer to what their partner said. They never refer to arguments opposite; they don't ever bring those up. And they don't develop arguments through the comments of others. So I kind of feel like I need to develop some kind of handout or some kind of worksheet or something. I have a worksheet that takes them through the difference between a mitigator, a turn, and a direct refutation argument, and boy, they got that because I heard nothing but, "That's a mitigate," "I'm gonna directly attack that," "Let's mitigate," "I'm gonna turn that." I heard nothing with that in the debate, which is great. I don't think they used the word turn, but they were turning things. But it became a school uniforms debate. It became school uniforms versus dress code, but we never had that comparative argument of who links to the disadvantages more or anything like that.

But it also made me question whether the short prep or the long prep is the best pedagogical method. That's an old debate that goes back between World University WDC versus WSDC. World schools debate has a mix, which is long prep motions that are determined and pushed onto the students. They get no say, and then short prep motions come from those long prep motions, but they get 30 minutes to kind of make their arguments. But they don't know what they're gonna be, although they are adjacent to the long prep motions. Maybe that's the way to go—have a couple of planned motions and then have some adjacent short prep. I don't know. Still on the fence about short prep and long prep. I think there's advantages to both, but it's impossible to teach both in a 14-week—not even that—the spring semester here. So, short 14-15 week semester, there's no way you can teach short prep and long prep unless you do world schools format, which might have some advantages to it.

The good thing is I got some students together to volunteer to try out a new format that I want to experiment with, and we might do that at the end of the term on Zoom or something and see if that format has any capabilities to it. Well, this has been the post pedagogy postgame pedagogy report for April 10th, 2025. I'm Dr. Steve Yano. Thank you for listening. I'm at my car. Have a good night.