Over the years I’ve found that one of the hardest things to do as a coach is to get parents involved as LD judges. Regardless of one’s position about so-called lay judging, it’s pretty much a given that at the starter and local levels we need parents to adjudicate because there’s really no one else. (And I’m not even thinking about Pfffft at the moment.) If we lived in a world where, by snapping our fingers, we could instantly summon a cadre of ex-TOC debaters to adjudicate every novice round (for free), it might be a different thing, but at events like our Mid-Hudson League meets for freshmen and sophomores, or at local tournaments likewise serving a non-$ircuit audience, especially those offering varsity-level competition, somebody has got to sit in the back of the room with a pen and a ballot, and parents are it. Throw in the need to chaperone on occasion (how many weekends does the average coach have events at multiple venues?) and there you are. So I’m not arguing in favor of parents in the bubble rounds determining TOC bids (although I could), I’m simply stating that in lots of places in the activity, we need ‘em. And, as I say, it’s not easy to get them.
In the past I’ve offered one or sometimes two evening seminars on LD judging each year. The attendance at these has steadily declined, a fact which I do not blame on the seminars themselves, which for many would be the social highlight of the season. I think what happens is that, early in the year, when their little freshman have only recently signed onto the debate team, parents don’t realize yet that they are needed, whereas from my point of view, this is the best time for me to train them. It’s not as if I could offer seminars every week of the year, there being a real world one must also live in. Lately we have integrated training into our local MHL and CFL events at the beginning of the year. This is pretty effective, actually. For the first round of the tournament we send in the parents as observers, usually of JV rounds, with an experienced varsity judge, with whom they can discuss the proceedings. After that round, we have a little seminar where we explain the whole process. Then we send parents back into the fray; maybe we’ll even give them a round to judge (in the bottom novice bracket). They should come away from this a little less paralyzed than when they went in. Watching newbies debate is not complicated; few are the first-time novices who are so up on their Habermas that they need to be tossed out of the window of one of the upper floors. Judging easy rounds is good training for new judges; they gain both confidence and experience so that at some point they would be able to comfortably judge more difficult rounds. As far as I know, no one is born a good judge, and experience is absolutely required. If you’ve won TOC yesterday and never judged, I would be hard-pressed to see you as anything better than a potentially good judge. There’s a big difference between debating and judging, and I have often seen little relation between the two; that is, many is the merely okay debater who proved to be an excellent judge, while good debaters have often acted as if they’re still advocates rather than adjudicators, becoming the worst of interveners.
By now I’ve collected all sorts of judging materials, including what I’ve written as handouts, the condensed instructions on the MHL ballots, my own lecture notes, sample flows, etc. What I’ve decided to do is tie it all together with a lecture/podcast. I’ve been updating and reorganizing my old lecture notes, and polishing my website judging page, and I hope to get to it this weekend. It won’t be a shortie, by any estimate. When I’ve given the lecture to Sailor parents, it’s gone on until the point where even I’m looking at my watch, but my guess is that doing it as a podcast will allow people to listen at their own speed, taking in what they need to at their own self-determined chunkage pace rather than as judging overload. Tying it into the written materials will augment it, and the whole thing should stand alone fairly nicely. Of course, it will be available to anyone who wants it, but at the very least I’ll push it through the local CFL and MHL venues. Some parents are happy to see their kids disappear into four years of debate somewhere other than home, but a large number are also interested in their kids’ activities and want to help out, and this should be a useful tool for that latter group. Judging isn’t that hard when you start out simultaneously with your own homegrown novice, but parents don’t necessarily realize that. They need all the help they can get (especially in a culture that often derides them as mommy-daddy judges, while at the same time insisting only on MJP, i.e., judges predisposed to accept whatever arguments are being run not because they’re inherently convincing arguments but because the advocates and adjudicators are both cut from the same sociological cloth). I’ll keep you posted on how this works out.
No comments:
Post a Comment