When I reflect upon my debate career, the first thing that comes to mind is the great coaches I was fortunate to work with. My coach at Tom C Clark HS, in San Antonio, TX was Cassandra Zuniga, and she was amazingly supportive. Outside of Clark, there were several other coaches who supported me as well, including Kandi King, Jason Warren, Steve Moss, and Chris Palmer.
Although I started debate a bit late (I joined my team as a sophomore) by my senior year I was winning national tournaments in Extemp: St. Marks, the Glenbrooks, and the University of Texas. I was also a finalist at the 2008 Tournament of Champions and placing 11th at NFL (now NSDA) Nationals.
When it was all over, I felt I had “succeeded” as an Extemper. I had a pretty nice collection of trophies, after all. But today, as a 28 year old who is a decade removed from the activity, I must confess: I don’t remember where the trophies are. I’ve moved away from home, and my belongings have been shuffled through various storage units. I know the trophies are somewhere, just not sure where, exactly.
At any rate, it’s all good. Because in retrospect, one thing is absolutely clear: succeeding as a debater has little to do with tournament results. Yes, placing well at tournaments is great, because it validates your work and efforts. But tournament success is an output of a much more meaningful sort of success. Namely, developing critical thinking skills, improving public speaking abilities, learning more about the world, and growing as a young adult through the adversities of the activity. Learning and growing, that’s what it’s all about. The lessons I got as an Extemper (and occasional Congressional Debater, Orator, and LDer) have carried with me into college and my professional career.
The magical sort of growth that debate unlocks can manifest in many forms. I remember a friend of mine from high school, Danny. He had immigrated from South Korea in middle school and his English was still a bit broken by the time we were in high school. He joined the debate team not with dreams of winning a bunch of tournaments, but to improve his English. And boy, did he achieve just that! I witnessed first hand his transformation from sophomore to senior year, and it was incredible. If we measure success in terms of personal growth and progress, Danny certainly got more out of the activity than I did. And I couldn’t be more proud of him for it.
Years later, I started Prepd. I had experience with software development and technology startups, and I wanted to give back to the community that had given so much to me. But I didn’t want to build tools that only served to improve tournament outcomes. I want Prepd teams to have competitive success, of course. But I don’t believe that success is measured in trophies, points, or rankings. Instead, I believe that debaters succeed whenever they learn and grow. That’s why the Prepd Team is building an education technology that helps coaches coach and helps debaters learn.
We’re focused on building great instructional tools for coaches (e.g., analytics and activity reports in the Classroom, or the Challenges feature to assign tasks). And for students, we want to empower them with engaging educational experiences (e.g., the Memory Bank and Vocabulary List help you learn more while you read, the Mark as Read feature allows you to track reading activity, Practice Questions in Extemp make it easy for you to give practice speeches, etc.).
We’re also committed to quality engineering and business practices. Our applications are beautiful and easy to use. Prepd performs quickly and reliably. On the business front, if you have questions or difficulties, we work hard to answer your questions or resolve your issue.
Last year, over 600 teams actively used Prepd. This year, we’d love to break 1,000. If you already use Prepd, please encourage other students or coaches to check us out. And if you haven’t yet joined Prepd, please create an account by visiting signup.prepd.in on the Chrome browser. You can use Prepd for free, and without restrictions, from now until October 1.
All the Best,
- Ian Panchevre, Prepd Founder
P.S. Have you downloaded our mobile apps yet? Install Prepd from the Apple App Store or Google Play and save/read articles on the go!
