Learning by Doing

 

In The Best Version of Alice, the main characters are high school debaters.  Students learn from debate in a variety of ways. They learn to work with a team, write a convincing argument, and present it in a confident, compelling way. It takes practice to become a good debater, but most people learn by doing. Coaching debate allowed me to watch students as they grew in their ability to construct effective debate briefs and present them confidently. They also learned to listen attentively to the opposition and respond appropriately. Traveling to and from debate tournaments as well as other literary events allowed me to get to know students in a more personal manner. Those students are often the ones I've kept up with after they graduate.

I enjoyed  going through a box of pictures recently from my years of teaching at Armuchee High School, and I thought my readers might enjoy them too.  Students don't just learn from listening to teachers from 8 to 3 each day. They learn from finding information and presenting it to one another; they learn from acting out plays they study in literature; they learn by tutoring children in a mobile home park in their community; they learn from competitions like Mock Trial, Debate, and Academic Decathlon; they learn from going on field trips to Washington, D.C, Renaissance Festivals (in costume),  Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in North Carolina,  Tybee Island (where they hold a snake); they learn by creating a brochure  and a handbook to outline how their school creates a recycling program; they learn by going to yearbook camps in the summer before they work on the school yearbook.