{"id":6296,"date":"2014-04-16T17:40:04","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T21:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=6296"},"modified":"2014-05-07T17:36:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T21:36:41","slug":"aurora-high-school-debate-team-challenges-richmond-hill-and-newmarket-on-home-turf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-high-school-debate-team-challenges-richmond-hill-and-newmarket-on-home-turf\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora High School debate team challenges Richmond Hill and Newmarket on home turf"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout the year, the Aurora High School (AHS) debate team has spent countless hours preparing and practicing their craft every Thursday night after school.<\/p>\n

After all their hard work, the team\u2019s skills will be on display next Wednesday when they host their own debate tournament at AHS. The tournament will pit them against some of the Region\u2019s best from Richmond Hill High School and Newmarket High School.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team members are very excited for this debate,\u201d said AHS debate team president Chen Liu. \u201cWe had a debate at Pickering College in December. I think that\u2019s the one that got our wheels going, but I think this one is a test for the debaters, and for me as well to see how well we organized it. It\u2019s great to see their skills implemented in a real competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group is made up of 15 students, mostly in Grade 10, who have been learning various styles of debate, from formal parliamentary debate to the less rigid.<\/p>\n

Liu said this year\u2019s debate team is focused and has grown together throughout a long school year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you can see people go into the debate team from all kinds of backgrounds and we all have a common goal of being able to share our ideas, express our opinions and, at the end of it, we can really see the level of confidence grow,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have all certainly come a long way from September.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin Nicolai, the debate team facilitator, and a history teacher at AHS, said Liu and the team have done a great job of staying dedicated throughout the whole year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the one who kind of organizes the students and suggests things we should do, but [Liu] has taken over that role almost completely and he\u2019s very enthusiastic, very responsible and very energetic,\u201d he said. \u201cHe does exercises for training the students and gets everyone involved and he\u2019s also the one who really organized this tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicolai has been involved with the debate team for over 10 years and said the students take a number of important skills out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that public speaking is a skill that is applicable to just about every job you can imagine,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s about organizing your thoughts and collecting information and very quickly developing a persuasive argument on your behalf. It also to requires the skill of seeing the other person\u2019s point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

But one of the biggest things he sees from students who get involved with the debate team is confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these kids come in and they\u2019re not really sure about whether they can do this and how good they\u2019ll be, but with practice, they\u2019ve really become quite effective speakers and I think that\u2019s something really positive as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liu said he remembers the first time he participated in a debate, recalling it as a \u201cscary experience,\u201d but he said the support from his teammates and reminding others that everyone starts out in the same place helps.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any career, it\u2019s important to have the communication skills to back up a point that you want to make,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope next year we will have a debate tournament for the YRDSB. That is a long term goal that I can see.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the year, the Aurora High School (AHS) debate team has spent countless hours preparing and practicing their craft every Thursday night after school. After all their hard work, the team\u2019s skills will be on display next Wednesday when they host their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1Dy","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 19:01:07","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\/6296","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=6296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}