Mr. Ritz’s room fills with students at the end of the school day. Decorations and plastic vines line the walls, and bright lights beam down from above. Students sit down next to their friends, talk in small groups and go up to the front and grab chips and water.
“Ok y’all, we’re gonna go ahead and start,” senior Katelyn Nguyen said as she makes announcements about the Angel debate tournament the week before.
As she finishes her speech, the debate team divides into four different groups. The Lincoln Douglas group moves to AJ-106, the public forum debate group stays in the same room, the speech group gather in AJ-121 and the policy debate group goes to AJ-106.
In their assigned room, the policy debate group sits down. The room has bare walls and sparse decorations with the desks arranged in groups of four. Without any windows, the fluorescents in the ceiling serve as the only source of light.
Friends talk amongst themselves in groups. They make plans for the weekend and talk with friends. They crack jokes and wait for the start of the presentation.
“All right, cool. If everyone could quiet down so we can start,” junior Katelyn Pasierb said.
The lights go off and darkness fills the room. Pasierb puts the weekly riddle on the projector. It reads, ‘It’s shorter than the rest, but when you’re happy, you raise it up like it’s the best. What is it?’ The students read the board and call out answers. A few minutes later, with nobody able to find the correct answer, the students converse with each other to try and solve it. Out of the darkness, an unseen student calls out the correct answer: a thumb.
Pasierb now pulls up a powerpoint called ‘How To Create A Neg. Argument’. She swivels in her chair as she tells them how to properly defend their argument in a debate.
Once Pasierb finishes the presentation, she explains how to use dropbox on laptops. She pulls up the arguments and counter-arguments the debate team have stored in there. She also explains how to navigate and search for files in dropbox.
“And there, we’re all done. Yeehaw,” Pasierb said as she closes out of the presentation.
The lights go back on to signal that the time to leave has arrived. Everybody stands up and goes out the door and out of the school.
