Tempestuous thunder and lightning: The return of debating at the Fort for 2022

These are our players: SRC Clubs and Committee Day

Debating in 2022 has been off to a strong start at Fort Street. Term 1 began with the SRC Clubs and Committee Day on Wednesday 16th of February where, with the help of volunteer debating students from 2021 who manned the Debating and Public Speaking stall from periods 1-4, we managed to recruit 30 new year 7 debaters from the class of 2022 into our Monday afternoon Debate Workshops.

A big thank you to Aiden Sen, Aiden Lee, Henry Huang (pictured), Aaditya Venkatraman (pictured), Ethan Lin, Dennis Yeo, Eleanor Alonso Love, Akshaya Rameshbabu, Atul Kolla, Rose Kenyon, Sebastian Lenehan Choo and Hugo Ceran-Jerusalemy for volunteering their time to run this stall.

A growth in the Monday afternoon Debate Workshop

This year we welcomed a new Head Debate Coach Gemma Taraneh Hedayati who along with Ms.Truong, oversaw the entire Monday after school debate workshop from 4.30pm-6.00pm.

Unfortunately, due to COVID restrictions, the workshops in term 1 were delivered online. Nonetheless, there was a large uptake of students in these workshops. As a result, we needed more debate coaches and thus welcomed back four Fortian alumni from the Year 12 class of 2021: Luca Butterworth, Alejo Pintos-Lopez, Meg Raven and Daniella Villafana. We hope to get Debating Workshops running again face-to-face from week 1, term 2.

Year 11 Premier’s Debating Challenge Round 1: Fort Street vs. Smith Hills High School (and the competition against the stubbornness of modern technology)

On Tuesday 22nd of February 2022, the Premier’s Debating Challenge started off with the Year 11 Debate Team debating against Smith Hills High School on the topic of online learning. To prepare for this debate, all Year 11 debaters participated in a workshop with Ms. Truong from 3.30pm-5.00pm where they engaged in a ‘Parliamentary’ style debate activity to improve their listening and rebuttal skills.

Even though we were well prepared for the debate the next day, we did not predict the heavy storms that plagued us for the entire day and caused major disruptions to our online zoom debate. We put up a good fight, with Matilda Gibian as our first speaker, Rose Kenyon as our second speaker and Sebastian Lenehan Choo as our third speaker. They were also morally supported by the team advisor, Hugo Ceran-Jerusalemy and the debate chairperson, Charlotte Dillon (pictured). Sadly, we were defeated but not all hope was lost when the Year 11 Debate Team was given a second chance in the repechage round.

Riding out the storm – Year 11 Premier’s Debating Challenge Round 2: Fort Street vs. Ryde Secondary College

On Tuesday 22nd of March 2022, the Year 11 Debate Team engaged in a heated repechage debate against Ryde Secondary College on the topic of tutoring. We were represented by Charlotte Dillon as our first speaker, followed by Dennis Yeo our second speaker and Ethan Lin as our third speaker and Yexuan Yang as team advisor (pictured). Learning from the mistakes of the previous debate, we were victorious against Ryde Secondary College which allowed us to return to the main round of the Premier’s Debating Challenge. Our next opponent is Newtown Performing Arts which will take place on Monday the 4th of April 2022 so stay tuned folks!

Ms. Truong
Debating and Public Speaking Coordinator for Fort Street High School