Promoting Debate in Boston Middle Schools

Debate Mate USA is a non-profit that provides peer-to-peer debate mentoring in Middle Schools serving under-served students throughout Boston. Through Debate Mate USA’s innovative model students learn through doing actively participating about debates that are relevant to their lives and their communities and while doing so develop 21st century skills such as confidence, communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and conflict resolution. Students are trained in the art of Debate by college student “mentors”. Debate Mate mentors are among the most successful students in their respective classes and all of whom have formal debate or public speaking experience. These mentors are then trained by the Debate Mate Staff in the art of teaching with special focus on making sure that the curriculum taught empowers students to become advocates and to master the skills that debate can give. Students quickly become engaged in the entertaining and easily accessible activities and slowly transition to more rigorous activities and eventually to fully functional debates as seen in the Debate Mate Cup.

Debate Mate currently operates free of charge in 27 middle schools throughout the Greater Boston area all of which either serve primarily low-income students or are below the median in their most recent MCAS scores.  The program runs for sixteen weeks throughout the school year from October to April. The Debate Mate program has two competitions that happen throughout the year, the Debate Mate League and the All day Debate Mate Cup which is held at Harvard in April.   

 

We need an additional $30,000 to make sure we end up in the black for the 2015-16 program year. Please help us attain that goal so we can continue to create free, after-school debate clubs now and into the future.