When I started coaching debate, I had zero experience. None. I wasn’t a former debater, I hadn’t spent years in the activity, and I didn’t have a deep understanding of policy debate strategy tucked away somewhere in my brain. I was learning it because my students needed me to. That first season, we fumbled through it on passion. I learned terminology while I was teaching it, tried to figure out what arguments mattered, and constantly wondered whether I was explaining too much, too little, or the completely wrong thing. There were plenty of moments when I felt like a novice right alongside my students. The difference was that I was the adult in the room, so I had to keep moving anyway.
And somehow, we did. We learned together, we competed, we improved, and over time I got better at coaching while my students got better at debating. I also owe a considerable debt to the experienced coaches who patiently answered my approximately 47,000 questions — and to the students from those first couple of years who graciously agreed to be part of my on-the-job debate education. They deserved hazard pay.
This year, I have a novice team again, and it feels like a second chance. Not because debate suddenly became easy — it definitely didn’t — but because I no longer feel like I’m simply staying one step ahead of my students. I understand much more clearly where novice debaters are going to get lost, what they need first, and what can wait until later.
When you’re new to debate, everything feels important: the terminology, speech order, evidence, flowing, plans, disadvantages, counterplans, stock issues, all of it. As a new coach, it can be incredibly hard to know where to begin. Now I can see that a resolution may sound simple until you ask a student to explain exactly what it requires. I know plan texts make more sense when students first understand the actor, the action, and what the affirmative is actually changing. I know stock issues are easier to understand as questions rather than vocabulary words. Most importantly, I know students need to understand the story of an argument before a stack of evidence is going to mean much to them.
That realization has changed the way I teach. This year, I have been starting with what students already know. They know how to argue. They know how to explain why something is a problem, propose a solution, and tell someone why that solution might not work. Policy debate gives those instincts structure. Before I worry about whether students are doing debate “correctly,” I want them to understand what they are actually doing. What is the affirmative trying to fix? Why does the negative disagree? What needs to be proven? Why does this argument matter? Once those ideas make sense, the technical pieces have somewhere to land.
Stock issues are one of the clearest examples. Instead of teaching them as another list of terms to memorize, we use them as questions: Harms — What is wrong? Inherency — Why isn’t the problem already being solved? Plan — What are we going to do? Solvency — Why will the plan work? Topicality — Does the plan actually fit the resolution? Those questions give students something concrete to hold onto. They can look at a case and begin to understand not only how it works, but how to argue about it.
The best part is that this year, I can actually see it clicking. My students are still novices. They still mix things up, ask questions that make me stop and think, and have a long way to go. But they understand what we’re doing. I can hear them making connections between lessons and explaining concepts to each other. I can ask a question and watch them reason through the answer instead of waiting for me to hand it to them. And I think part of why that feels so meaningful is because I remember exactly what it felt like to sit there thinking, I have no idea what I’m doing either.
If you’re a newer debate coach and you feel like you’re figuring this out alongside your students, I get it. There is so much to learn, and there is a huge difference between understanding debate yourself and knowing how to teach it to a brand-new debater. That’s a big reason I’ve started turning my own novice debate lessons into resources for other coaches.
My first three lessons follow the same foundation I’m using with my own students: Welcome to Policy Debate — You Know How to Argue, Understanding the Resolution and Building a Plan, and Stock Issues. Together, they take students from everyday argumentation into the basic structure of policy debate, resolution analysis, plan building, and the stock issues framework. I’ve also bundled the first three lessons together for coaches who want the full introductory sequence.
You can find them in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here:
I’m still learning, and I think every debate coach probably is. But this year, I don’t feel like I’m simply trying to survive the season alongside my students. I feel like I know where we’re going — and that makes a huge difference.
And if you were one of the coaches who answered my endless questions or one of the students who lived through those first couple of years with me, just know your service has not been forgotten.
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