Allan Appel Photo
Marshall with 7th-graders: Ready … set … debate!
It makes sense for middle school kids to learn a new language at school, because 10 years old or so is just about the time when it becomes harder. So why not start at an opportune time?!
Respectfully, to disagree: Teaching a language consumes so much time. There are so many other classes kids want to take instead. Cooking, for instance. Design. Technology, or computer coding.
Plus, kids, including so many immigrant kids like us, can learn or hone Spanish, Mandarin, or you name it, at home, from our parents.
Such arguments and counter-arguments engaged “Team Yale” and “Team Howard” — otherwise known as two teams of seventh-graders— in the championship round Tuesday of Delores Marshall’s “Read 180 Great Debate.”
Read 180 is one of the intervention programs at Hill Central School designed to bring kids up to grade level in reading.
A formal debate Wednesday wrapped up the program’s unit. The unit’s theme was language learning for middle school kids.
It was the fifth year that veteran teacher Marshall has mounted the session, complete with four teachers as formal judges, a debate rubric (comprehension, delivery, persuasiveness) to judge each speaker and rebutter. The aim is for the kids to celebrate learning and to demonstrate new-found competence in areas that go well beyond reading, she said.
An enthusiastic high school and college debater herself, Marshall sees debate as a way to boost kids’ confidence, as well as to help them learn how to listen well and look interlocutors in the eye.
“They’re shy, and it helps our students with their confidence and to experience their culture,” she said.
Stephanie DeLeon and Brian Hernandez deliver the opposition’s case.
The experience Wednesday did not disappoint.
The debate’s topic question: “Should middle school students learn a new language or not?”
One boy, particularly hard of hearing, had rarely spoken before in class. He delivered the opposition argument’s closing statement.
Another child, Nazir Durrani, a shy and soft-spoken native of Afghanistan, argued that Spanish is worthwhile to learn in school. He learned from his research that it is the second most-spoken language in his new country, the U.S.
Learning a second language in school helps you get a better job, he added in his rebuttal.
Coin Toss, & High Fives
Janiel Hernandez and Bryan Vidal, of the opposition, listen.
Before those arguments began, two team captains Chasity Bell and Willianee Perez, did the coin toss. Taking other tropes from sports, they high-fived each other and took their seats in a long facing row of desks in room 215, and Marshall got the proceedings under way.
Ricky Boyd got the pro-learning language in school position started by asserting, “Learning language, like Spanish, in school can increase your IQ by 3 percent.”
“You don’t need to go to school to increase your IQ,” countered Stephanie DeLeon of the opposition.
Taking turns, and asking for clarity and repetition if necessary, each kid spoke, limited to three or four minutes by Marshall’s clock.
Here’s a sample of some of the interchanges:
Ricky: “Learn it now because it’s harder when you are older.”
Nazir Durrani takes in an argument.
Stephanie: “I respectfully diagree. You can learn any time, and from home or your neighbor.”
Ricky: “The perfect age to learn a new language is six or seven. For a child reaching puberty is really hard. Ten years old is the last chance when it’s easy.”
Stephanie: “My mom learned [English] from me!”
Nazir: “The second language in the U.S. is Spanish.”
Ricky: “Roberto Clemente knew Spanish, and it took him to Major League Baseball and to be one of the greatest players of all time.”
The kids, of course, got off argument. If their interlocutors didn’t point that out, Marshall did, asking for clarity, focus, repetition.
Survey Says …
Jadin Ortiz, Wayne Boyd, Alex Chow-yen, and Quincy Hall, one of the teams from an earlier round.
Perhaps the turning point in the presentation came when Bryan Hernandez, of the opposition, respectfully asked permission to show the judges — Literacy Coach Krista Burgen, Assistant Principal Nicole Brown, Math Coach Elizabeth Hick, Literacy Intervention Facilitator Deb Thorson, and writing teacher Amy Schlank — actual evidence that his team had produced.
It was a survey. The opposition team had asked students what other courses they would like if they could substitute them for language classes in school. The results from 20 respondents: Seven kids wanted to take a technology class. Three favored dance. Seven chose cooking; two, design; and one, coding.
A few more presentations and rebuttals ensued. Janiel Hernandez said that you could go to a library, read a book and learn a language faster than in school.
That prompted Amani Hines, one of the most active debaters on the “Howard” squad, to say that he had mastered speaking Italian by spending just three days on Google Translate.
Never mind that some of his interlocutors and the judges eyed his claim with skepticism. Stephanie DeLeon seized the debate moment, for the opposition: “So you’re agreeing with us,” she declared.
Stephanie rises to rebut Ricky and Amani.
Ricky Boyd realized what had happened, leaned toward Hines, and declared: “How did we get trapped in this!”
But the evidentiary survey produced by Bryan Hernandez and his colleagues on the opposition team won the day. The judges totaled their votes, led by the math coach, with this result: Yale, the opposition, 68; and Howard, 55.
Writing coach Schlank, in handing out certificates and trophies, congratulated the kids on their learning how to listen to each other.
The kids shook hands, and went on to their next class.
Delores Marshall said that before proceeding to the next unit in Reading 180, which covers identity, she plans to screen, as she has done every year now the 2007 film The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington.
The more languages, the better for these kids living in a global society. Mandarin, Russian, Farsi, Arabic and more should be considered as choices in grammar schools. In Europe most folks are multi-lingual.