Welcome back readers (Teachers), and today we will be giving over what happened after I wrote This Blog Post (https://www.blog44.ca/jonahl/2025/11/21/will-i-become-a-great-debater🤔/) and how I have changed from this experience! In the start of this project I was definitely stressed out. I was scared because I am usually not the best at public speaking, that’s not saying I can’t do it, just saying that it takes me a while to get myself ready for the moment. 

My Goals 

Going into this project I had set myself a realistic achievable goal. I knew it was important that this goal was really good, becasue I would be basing most of my project around it in a way. To find a goal that met these standards I went to my VMV to see what my priorities for the year were. The two categories that stood out were: Collaboration, and communication. Im sure you can guess why these two were good for a debate unit. In specific my goal was to “try and cross off at least two ideas or resolutions each from these two boxes”. This went very well. I proficiently completed all of the goals inside these two boxes except “I should work on using digital tools or visuals to create a presentation that enhances or clarifies the topic or message (Keynote, iMovie)” the only reason I didn’t complete this goal is because their wasn’t really a opportunity to complete it throughout this project. I am very happy with meeting this goal becasue it really showed me that if I keep a goal in the back of my head throuought a project, I can slowly chip away at it, and eventually complete it! 

The Learning 

During the actual learning portion of the project,  there were two main pieces, Get Rhetoric Ready, and Know It All. Ms. Madsen ran Get Rhetoric Ready while Mr. Edel ran Know it all. The Know it all portion of the project was content and research  based. we learnt all about how to research and make sure our notes were true and accurate. The Get Rhetoric Ready portion was based on learning how to public speak a little more, making sure our speaking was good and clear enough. At one point Ms. Madsen even had the class put corks in our mouths! Having the class split up and working on different parts of our debate preparation every day definitely worked well. Being  able to focus on different things was good especially for a project like this.

The Night of the Exhibition 

The actual exhibition went just as expected, kinda. Normally before the exhibition we are frantically taping and gluing and painting to set up the room. However this exhibition we all sat and did work, last minute preparations with the team and making sure everyone was on top of everything. My team was the second debate of the night. The way it was structured was the two teams would gather near the front to hear if they were arguing for the negative or posotive of the topic, and in the the later rounds what our topic even was. That’s Crazy!!!!! I was put on crossfire duty with Esther. This in my opinion was the hardest role for a few reasons, 1. We couldn’t prepare ahead of time,  2. We didn’t really know how to do Crossfire, and 3. It really pushed our ability to think on the spot. Long story short, our first debate went ok, we won, our second debate went super well, we won, and our third debate was super shaky, but we still won somehow. Piece that all together and you have your PLP Debate Tournament 2025 winners! Team Orange! Our team had great chemistry that set us up super well for this tournament and we are all glad the with the result.

Summary 

Overall this project was a great opportunity for me to grow as a individual as well as a team player. I had fun learning during this project which is a rare thing when doing something challenging. If I were to try and do this project again, I would have loved to have a strategy during the actuall debate on how to corner our opponent. In terms of the actual work I was quite happy with how my reaserch went, however for next time I would love to go into more deep dives into specific topics that could help us during the debate. Thank you for reading, until next post!