{"id":23730,"date":"2019-05-09T16:50:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23730"},"modified":"2019-05-09T16:50:48","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:50:48","slug":"aurora-student-brings-home-crown-in-world-debating-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-student-brings-home-crown-in-world-debating-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora student brings home crown in World Debating Championships"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora\u2019s Anna Croxon\nbrought home top honours last week at the World Individual Debating and Public\nSpeaking Championships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Grade 11 student\nat King\u2019s Country Day School (CDS) took on the world at the competition, which\nwas held at Toronto\u2019s Branksome Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna was one of three\nCDS students participating in the event and captured the overall World Champion\nTitle, clinching the crown with her persuasive speech on voluntourism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnna presented the\nspeech of her lifetime and was rewarded accordingly,\u201d says debate coach Kerstin\nWyndham-West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna tells The\nAuroran she didn\u2019t go into the competition thinking she would do as well as she\ndid and taking top honours \u201cwas definitely surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a Goals List\non my phone for myself of things I would like to accomplish and just placing\nwithin the Top 30 is something I would have considered an accomplishment,\u201d says\nAnna. \u201cComing home knowing I had won the entire thing was very surreal and it\ndefinitely felt good because I\u2019ve worked really hard at debating and public\nspeaking since Grade 7. Knowing that the hard work has paid off and is being\nrecognized is something really special.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The competition, she\nsays, turned out to be \u201cone of the most amazing experiences\u201d of her life, one\nwhich allowed her to meet people from around the world, individuals who are\nlike-minded and passionate about what they believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tackling the subject\nof voluntourism was something she says was slightly outside her comfort zone.\nWhen preparing for a Persuasive speech, Anna says she often focuses on making\nan emotional connection. This time, however, the subject presented what she\ndescribes as a \u201crisk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was especially\nimpactful [at Branksome Hall] because a lot of the judges were teachers at the\nschool, parents with children in private school, or judges from other private\nschools from all over the world,\u201d she says. \u201c[This subject] is something that\nhit very close to home because a lot of the people partake in these volunteer\nservice trips and a lot of the feedback I got from parents and judges was\n<\/p>\n\n\n

[they]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

have been on one of these trips, or their children had, and, \u2018your\nspeech allowed me to rethink my priorities in terms of those trips, and if I am\nactually helping people when I go over.\u2019\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen researching, it\nwas definitely a topic that touched me because in our quest to help other\npeople, we\u2019re actually doing more harm, which is something I don\u2019t think many\npeople are aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the World levels,\nparticipants begin the competition in the preliminary round and contestants are\nadvanced to the next level based on these scores. Typically, the Top 12 advance\nto the finals and this Top 12 is whittled down to just two individuals who rise\nto the top and then go head-to-head in the Grand Finals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was\nnerve-wracking making the Grand Finals, but it was a very special experience as\nwell,\u201d says Anna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With her trophy in\nhand, and her Goals List still on her phone, Anna says she is hoping to be able\nto take on the world once again at next year\u2019s competition in Shanghai. In the\nmeantime, she\u2019s focusing on Grade 12 and her post-secondary career, preparing\nher application packages for a number of American universities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should she have the\nchance to defend her title in Shanghai, she\u2019s brainstorming fresh topics with\nwhich to wow the judges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is hard to come\nup with a speech topic because you want it to be both unique and worldly,\nsomething that people might not have necessarily thought about,\u201d she says. \u201cI\ndefinitely have to do research; there are things that interest me, such as abuse\nof women online, and I also think that the topic of toxic masculinity and how\nthat effects the feminism movement is something I would be interested in. I\nwant to make sure I am doing something that will have an impact while also\neducating myself and building my knowledge bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf a school offers debating or public speaking,\nit is something that is really meaningful to pursue and I would encourage any\nstudent to partake in any time for public speaking, even if it isn\u2019t a\ndesignated club at your school because you will build skills and friendships\nthat last forever. I don\u2019t think I would be the person I am today if I hadn\u2019t\nenjoyed public speaking and debating because it has shaped me so much.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora\u2019s Anna Croxon brought home top honours last week at the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2019-05-09-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6aK","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 01:34:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}