Service Description

The National HBCU Speech and Debate Association is developing and will test the effectiveness of bringing a speech and debate curriculum to schools, school districts, colleges and universities across the country. We teach relevant skills that impact every area of academic study, personal, and professional development. Developing the presentation skills at the middle school level will have both immediate and lifelong benefits. The National Federation of State High School Association states "debate is an essential opportunity that should be provided to all students... Students develop skills in research, critical thinking, organization, persuasion, and communication." The main program expense will be to work with collaborators to build and refine the curriculum to adapt to the middle school students, as well as professional and trained consultants to provide programmatic support. Expenses will include working closely with educators, printing classroom instructional materials and collecting data for the program’s results. We will be building out our website over the next year to be a “virtual school building” dedicated to Speech & Debate education complete with a resource library, classrooms, training area, a community for educators engaged in the program, and so forth. Our other major expense will be securing and building out an educational software system, as well as testing to create and publish research.