Check out new resources and opportunities for you, Coach!

National Tournament Updates

Registration » Middle School National Tournament registration is now open! Learn more or register by May 15. High school tournament registration opens once a district's full district tournament series has concluded and the chair has confirmed the results. Coaches will receive an email when registration is open for their school. Learn more about Nationals »

Road to Nationals Fund » Applications are open for the Road to Nationals Fund, which provides financial assistance to schools that are lacking financial resources attend the high school National Speech & Debate Tournament. Learn more or apply by April 20 »

Apply to be a Policy Topic Writer

Are you a high school Policy Debate coach interested in writing a topic paper and attending the annual topic meeting? Apply for the Policy Topic Fellowship! The NSDA has partnered with the NFHS to offer two Policy Debate topic fellowships to increase representation in the Policy Debate topic selection process. Learn more and apply by April 1 »

Take Advantage of Tabroom.com Features

• Doc Sharing: Tabroom.com allows users to share speech docs during rounds without sharing personal email addresses. This feature protects privacy while enabling communication. Tournament administrators can enable this feature in the settings of their tournament. Learn more » 
• Tournament Signups: Students can use this feature to sign up for tournaments online. Coaches still confirm entries before they are officially registered for the tournament. Learn more »
• Changing Student Names or Adding Pronunciations: Students can retroactively change the way their name appears on past judge and competitor records. They can also add phonetic pronunciations to ensure their names are read correctly at award ceremonies instead of relying on coaches to do it for them. Learn more »
• Ballot Comment Approval: Would you like to preview judge comments in Tabroom.com before your students read them? Coaches have the option to review ballot comments before releasing them to students. You can find the setting to approve ballots and comments under the Settings tab of your school account. Learn more »

• Track Attendance: Coaches can create a practice session and mark students on the roster as present. The system keeps a running log of which and how many practices students have attended. To do so: 

  1. From your school page, select the Practice tab.

  2. Choose Create.

  3. Enter the name of the practice (e.g., Thursday Team Practice).

  4. Enter the times.

  5. Decide if the practice is recurring (and if so, how frequently).

  6. Select Save Practice.

This example shows how to create a reoccurring after-school practice on Tuesdays through the end of the school year. Once you've created a practice, select the Upcoming or Past button and use the blue box under Mark to toggle on the students who attended the practice.

Learn from a Congress National Champion

In this session, 2024 House champion Fadhil Lawal shares his experience with Congress and why he preps speeches on both sides of a bill, what he thinks about using AI for prep, how he handles low precedency, and more! Watch the recording or share it with students in Congress.  

Our next champion Q&A is with two-time Informative champion Anneteke Adoga in April. Register »

National Speech and Debate Education Day Recap

Did you see the U.S. Senate resolution recognizing March 7 as National Speech and Debate Education Day? We loved celebrating the importance of this activity alongside schools from around the country last week!  

If you and your team participated, be sure to fill out our contest form and you could win prizes for your team during the 2025 National Speech & Debate Tournament! Learn more »

Share Scholarship Listings with Students

We keep a list of nearly 200 colleges with scholarships for speech and debate participation. Explore the list or share it with your students interested in competing after high school. 

Teaching Consequentialism with Examples

Organize the class into groups of three or four. Then, pose one or both of the following two hypotheticals to your entire class:

• John, who works at a trillion-dollar business, has a friend named Sally. Sally is very sick and needs $50,000 dollars to save her life. The only way to get this money in time is to steal it. John steals the money from the business and saves Sally’s life. Was John right to steal the money?
• June was a passenger on a ship that sank. She escaped on a life raft with four strangers. Now, their life raft is slowly sinking because the load is too heavy. To stop their life raft from sinking, June must push someone off the life raft and into the ocean. June decides not to push someone off. Was June right not to push someone off?

Give each group five minutes to discuss the hypothetical(s) among themselves. Then, ask a few groups to briefly share their opinions with the class. Was John (utilitarian) right? Was June (deontologist) right? Why or why not? Use this discussion as a jumping off point for the lecture on the basics of consequentialism. This lesson is excerpted from Start Here: Teaching Lincoln-Douglas Debate. All the units in the Start Here series are included with your NSDA membership. 

Questions? We're here to help! Email info@speechanddebate.org or call (920) 748-6206.

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