Writopia Junior World School Styles

2021 — Online, DC/US

• Invite

Come join Writopia Lab’s International Junior World School Styles Debate Tournament!

Saturday, November 13th

Click here to register through our website.

Click here to pay through our website. 

Writopia Lab's mission is to foster joy, literacy, and critical thinking in children and teens from all backgrounds through creative writing. This mission is rooted in our belief that celebrating and sharing stories contributes to the building of stronger, more empathetic young people and societies. Now, we intend to carry our mission into the realm of public discourse through the World Style Schools debate circuit. Through our tournament, we hope to empower today’s youth with confidence, empathy, and a deep and nuanced understanding of the complexities of the world around them.  

Our debate tournament is open to debaters between the ages of 10-14. Debaters located in any region of the world may register, and we do not require teams to be formed from the same school. We encourage both novice and experienced debaters to join our tournament! Teams may include 3-5 debaters, though only 3 debaters may compete in each round.

We will be using an altered version of World School Styles Debate; time limits for our tournament are more flexible, and each speaker may present their case for 3-5 minutes without points being deducted. At Writopia, we focus on strength-based learning, and our judges will provide feedback to the debaters in a way that empowers them and motivates them to reach their full potential! 

A list of ten motions will be published on our tabroom website on October 13th. Three of these motions will be chosen by our judges to be debated during the tournament. The motion for the championship round will be given by the judges with no advanced notice. Our motions will be chosen in order to provide a wide variety of world issues for our debaters to address, including motions involving U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

We request a $50 donation per team. If this is not financially possible, please contact us so that we can find a way to make our tournament accessible to your team. Included within the donation is the option to attend Writopia’s Debate workshop on the evenings of Tuesday, November 16th and Tuesday, November 23rd for our solution-building salon. At this time, we will switch gears from competition to cooperation, and we will focus on solution building for a pre-selected issue together. Through this, the debaters will tackle the issue in a deep and nuanced way while gaining a greater understanding of the value of collaboration.

We award outstanding debaters with trophies, certificates to participate in a specialty Creative Writing workshop at Writopia Lab, and the option to be celebrated within our newspaper and social media!

For more information, please contact Rachelz@writopialab.org