Thinking today about what should happen at the first meeting of the new team. I want to ballance the needs of pedagogy with the needs of structure and organization.  Here are some of the options:

1. Discussion of Organization of the Team/Travel Schedule

2. Viewing a Video of a Debate

3. Discussion/Lecture on the proceedures and rules of debate

4. “Baptism by Fire” – choosing a few people to participate in a debate straight away.

I’d like to do all of the first three, but I don’t want the meeting to take too long.  I am also unsure about when and how to discuss research with them, but I’m thinking a casual approach might be best.  We’ll have some practices and suggest some casual informative reading to them at first, then work on a more formal research procedure as we find out that we need it due to low quality debates.

One of the issues for me in debate pedagogy is the ballance between administrative concerns and pedagogical concerns. In the past I’ve let this sort of fall naturally into whatever position is easiest to handle, but this time I’m concerned about what else falls away when the director is not attentive to the ballance.

Most teams in the U.S. (in policy anyway) don’t need to be concerned with this – they recruit and give scholarships, and they have assistant coaches to check the pedagogical quality of the arguments and research the students produce.  The director can supervise at his or her pleasure, and direct the administrative needs of the team.

In this case, it’s all new students, many of which I’m going to guess have not had any formal training at all. I’m also adjusting to a new system and budget, as well as a new region and new types of debate.  I just need to be mindful of maintaining a good educational environment while still being attentive to administrative details.  It’s something I should remind myself of often.