Debate and Public Speaking Nights

Every Wednesday night is when we have an academic competition between the houses.  Last Wednesday was Debate Night.  Each house competed in two rounds of debating, judged by our teaching staff.  When the scores were tallied, there were two finalists remaining Liul Tsegaye of the “11 Geniuses” house and Senait Zemenu of the “Habesha” house.  In the final round they debated the topic “Is it good for a country to have a strong economy or a strong military?”  The two debaters went at it in front of their peers and in the end, when the scores were tallied by Kyle Kastler, the YSEL Program Coordinator, Liul was the winner!

  Last night was the Public Speaking competition.  Two members of each house were selected to show off their oratory skills.  The judges this time were our new teaching team: Pamela Cayemitte, Amanda Sutker, Nzingha Uhuru, and Kristen Rosen.  There were two categories. The first was a prepared speech modeled after Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, where each candidate had to express their ideas for how they see their future and talk about their “dream”.  The second category was an impromptu speech where students chose a topic from “Tom’s Topic Box” and had 5 minutes to prepare a speech about it.  In the end, Hannah Abate of the “11 Geniuses” house won the “I Have A Dream” speech, and Senait Zemenu of the “Habesha” house won the Impromptu speech competition.  There are some wonderful public speakers among the YSEL campers and it was close in both competitions.  Congratulations to our winners!