syllabus

Kris Wright wright.kris@gmail.com 214-695-7761

**Our Norms** If you disagree, make an argument. Be responsive to reasons, which means contesting them to test their strength and accepting them when they are comparatively stronger than your opposing reasons. It also means that in everything you do, you must be able to give an account of why that behavior will expand your brain and/or the brains of others, including students and teacher.

**Our Team’s Big-Goals** *Goals will reset after we reach them.
 * 1) 100% of students reach their personal goals
 * 2) Ongoing social/community service work, with at least 1 event per month with 80% attendance.
 * 3) 1st Place in the Dallas Urban Debate Association
 * 4) at least 10 qualifications for TFA State (4 LDers & 3 CX teams)
 * 5) at least 4 qualifications for the TOC and/or NFL Nationals

Grade Percentage Breakdown:
Classwork - 20% Homework - 20% Six Weeks Test - 15% Tests - 25% Projects/Products - 20%

**How I will determine your course grade:**
 * 1) Attend at least 3 school board meetings a semester and submit a summary paper on what was discussed at the meeting and your opinion of the process.
 * 2) Teaching/Facilitate the others’ learning: Twice a month, every junior and senior is required to teach/co-teach an hour lesson to the novices after school and periodically to the varsity class. Grades will be assigned to lesson planning (including independent practice), execution of lesson, and student mastery of objective. *Sophomores may earn bonus points by teaching with a junior/senior.
 * 3) For coordinators, regularly fulfilling your specific responsibilities, including communicating with Mr. Wright and students working under you.
 * 4) Essays and Projects: Periodically, you will complete an essay to be submitted for publication or to present at an academic conference.
 * 5) Independent Practices of Skill and/or Content Lessons: write a debate argument, or series of arguments, that can be used in a round and demonstrate mastery of the skill and/or content taught.
 * 6) Tournament Prep: attending after school practices, completing blocks, cases, off-cases, and revisions of those materials.
 * 7) Reading Checks: open-text quizzes over assigned readings

**How I will decide who attends which tournaments:** Several considerations will be used: How hard the student has demonstrably worked, how many tournaments the student has had the chance to compete at, being in overall good-standing with the team, and competitive skill. For out of state tournaments, I will also consider whether the student has qualified for TFA State because traveling out of state will usually mean missing a TFA qualifying tournament.

**My Background** I earned a B.A. in Philosophy and Government at the University of Texas. During four years as an undergraduate, I coached LD at Marcus High School, where seven of my LDers qualified for State, twice reaching semis. Four different students qualified to the TOC, including a bubble-round participant and quarter finalist. Three qualified to NFL nationals, including an 11th place finish. Two of those students attended law school, and one is currently clerking for a federal judge in Houston. All the others have also going on to do awesome things: from teaching at inner city schools to medical school to PhD programs.

At the prompting of one of my debaters, I earned a M.A. in Gender Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. My thesis, “Queering Race,” is original research in critical race theory, and in he use of Wittgenstein’s writings on language, to propose new modes of resistance. While in graduate school, I coached LD at Westlake High School in Austin. One of my students was the 2008 runner-up at UIL State and another student was the 2009 TFA State Campion, Top Seed, and Top Speaker (and was a semifinalist as a junior). Two of my students were in finals of 6 TOC qualifying tournaments and in outrounds of every TOC tournament they attended. One of them finished in semis of the TOC and placed 11th at NFL nationals.

Given my graduate research in the production and resistance of racist norms, I decided that I was morally obligated to work in resistance to the oppression of low-income students. To that end, I co-founded a nonprofit organization called the Texas Debate Collective. TDC seeks to expand opportunities for low-income students to participate in high school debate. Three of my debaters at Westlake helped me co-found TDC and continue to serve in teaching and administrative roles as TDC has continued to expand and deepen its impact on the debate community.

After finishing graduate classes, I returned to the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex, coached LD at Southlake High School, where two of my students reached finals of four TOC qualifying tournaments, including St. Marks. One of my students reached semifinals of TFA State in 2010. Several of my debaters, along with many others from previous schools, have worked and continue to work on behalf of low-income students by working at TDC during the summer.

In 2010, I applied to Teach For America, which is an organization that recruits people they believe will be effective teachers to place into low-income schools. TFA’s strategy is to close the achievement gap in education by placing highly effective teachers in low-income schools so that these teachers can both have a direct impact on student success and then become lifelong advocates for students in low-income communities. Approximately 40,000 people apply with 4,000 admitted. I was selected and served for two years in Dallas as a Special Education and then English teacher at the Oak Cliff Campus of Texans Can Academy.

I began coaching LD at Law Magnet in 2011-2012, while still teaching full time at Texans Can Academy. I became the head debate coach at Law Magnet last year and am very excited for my second year here, where I can dedicate much more of my time to helping you achieved your educational and competitive goals!