Jun 20, 2023 At 03:58 PM EDT
The National Speech and Debate Association is not affiliated with the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues.
The 2023 National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) National Tournament is underway in Phoenix, bringing together over 6,000 of the top high school and middle school speakers and debaters from around the globe.
NSDA Executive Director J. Scott Wunn said he is just happy to get back to a "higher level of normalcy" since the COVID-19 pandemic altered the massive in-person event for a few years.
"In between rounds, you're seeing the smiling faces, you're seeing that one-on-one communication that's happening with all of the participants," he told Newsweek. "It's just a better interpersonal communication experience being back and being able to lift those protocols, as opposed to last year."
The 2023 tournament marks Wunn's twentieth year as NSDA director.
Wunn's speech and debate journey started in a small town in Iowa, where he was a four-sport athlete with a "competitive mentality" who fell in love with delivering speeches. But after competing in his state's speech festival, Wunn discovered that he could make giving speeches a competitive game.
He went on to compete in college forensics at Graceland University and became a teacher and speech team coach. While he was teaching, Wunn became interested in debate but didn't know how to start a team. Thankfully, a few key mentors stepped in and told him about the NSDA, which at the time was called the National Forensic League.
"And I always remember that because I think that so many coaches need that kind of mentoring and fostering to really understand what's out there to grow," he said.
While baseball throws out the ceremonial first pitch, we had Executive Director J. Scott Wunn throw the first Prickles at this lucky team! Thank you for a fantastic first day at our expo. We can't wait for the competition to begin tomorrow! Rest up, drink water, and rock on🤘 pic.twitter.com/AjzObpUBf1
— National Speech & Debate Association (@speechanddebate) June 12, 2023
He started coaching debate, but Wunn said he never lost his love for speech events. While he's coached several debate finalists at state and national tournaments, his only national champion was in an event called humorous interpretation. This, he said, "just proves how funny I am."
When the global pandemic hit in early 2020, speech and debate was put on hold and forced to adapt to the new reality. Wunn said the NSDA had to figure out a way to "save the activity" during that time. With the ultimate goal of returning to in-person competition, Wunn said losing that one-on-one interpersonal communication was not an option.
The pandemic offered an opportunity for the NSDA to refocus its training and increase opportunities for participation in speech and debate. The NSDA created an online infrastructure of virtual classrooms that would allow debates to continue to run.
But Wunn said this "opened [his] eyes" further to those who still weren't getting access to debate: students without reliable internet. So the NSDA issued technology grants and worked to eliminate the cost barriers that were creating accessibility challenges.
To make the activities more accessible, the NSDA not only focused on the students, but also on the teachers and coaches. The NSDA offered professional development courses to ensure that educators had free access to the necessary tools to run debate teams.
"One of the great barriers to having a program is not the administrators' desire to have a speech and debate program," Wunn said. "It's not even necessarily the desire or the willingness to create a team. It's getting coaches that will have the proper training and be able to make it through that first year or two."
As a former coach himself, Wunn said he still remembers the challenge of understanding exactly what was needed to build the foundation of a program.
"We've really leaned into our education programming for coaches so that when people are successful, they are able to gain access to the national tournament event," he said.
The NSDA is also focused on creating a safe and inclusive community for debaters as they return to in-person competition.
Wunn said the organization has worked to educate the NSDA community about the challenges marginalized students face in and out of debate competitions. Having those conversations fosters greater respect for and understanding of those challenges and works to lower those barriers to access at a local and national level.
"One thing that's beautiful about our activity is that so many of the current coaches want more teams and coaches in the activity," he said. "They want to be inclusive and they want to create that access. So we've tried to really educate them through multicultural judge training and various things to really help them understand how they might be able to provide those access points for those programs."
Debate is not just a national activity, but it stretches around the globe. Teams from U.S. territories like Guam as well as countries like China, Singapore and Canada came to Arizona to compete.
Most of the international teams participated in World's School, the primary form of debate done at the World's level, Wunn said.
"I think it goes at the core of what we're hoping and what we know the activity can do for students—empower them to use their voice for good," he said. "And the reality is that we live in a global society in which interaction with students from other cultures, other life experiences, other backgrounds is so important."
Wunn said this connection is emblematic of the transformation that will occur as students move into adult life, as they will be "challenged" and asked to communicate and participate in a global society.
"Having that opportunity to debate and dialogue with students from all parts of the country, as well as different parts of the world, is setting the stage for them to be the most successful as they move on in their lives," Wunn added. "And we just truly believe that it's that debate, that dialogue, that interaction, that expression of voice cross-culturally, and that allows them to grow and develop the most."
Even though speech is his first love, Wunn knows the importance of high school debate.
As a teacher, he knows how to spot a debater in his class, as they are the ones willing to "challenge the information they're receiving," but not in a negative way, he clarified. The students elevate the conversations happening in the classroom, which lifts every other student to that level of critical thinking and participation.
Wunn said the future of our society depends on encouraging young people to question, discuss and deliberate about the world.
"They can learn more [and] they can formulate not just their skills but their opinions and understand the process for doing that, post high school," he said. "Debate has always been the key for us creating a better society. And its willingness to listen to all those voices and our collective effort to give access to those students to express their voices will be the key to the path forward for our society."
