Letter from Ann
Dear Friends,
People have been asking us to run these adult classes for years. We are happy that 2024 will give you and your adult friends and family the opportunity to participate in this wonderful and worthwhile activity.
Debate is an amazing tool for improving your communication skills. It is a unique way to build or hone your public speaking expertise and your analytical thinking skills. It helps people learn how to address contentious issues and how to respectfully disagree. Strong debaters are strong public speakers and strong oral advocates. They are better communicators in public and in private relationships. It helps you develop the ability and confidence to talk fluidly even about complex topics. It also helps you develop a method of cognitive organization that is helpful in any presentation or negotiation.
“Strong debaters are strong public speakers and strong oral advocates.”
We know that adults can have a complicated relationship with public speaking. Therefore, we are offering two tracks: one for confident public speakers who are looking for an intellectual challenge, a new community and a real conversation. We also recognize that up to 75% of us have a fear of public speaking ranging from slight nervousness to absolute panic. This fear can prevent us, both in public and in private, from being able to articulate and share our thoughts and feelings. This deprives the world of fully hearing our voice. Debate provides a wonderful opportunity to finally begin to address this fear. Our work with hundreds of children of all ages over these years who suffer from the same anxieties has shown us how incredibly powerful a tool debate is for overcoming fear of public speaking. We have designed a special track just for you. We will move at your speed with constant encouragement and understanding and support. Our goal is that you will emerge from these classes with a newfound ability to stand up and to speak your truth no matter the audience.
I have had the extreme honor and pleasure of being at the helm of Westfield Academy for the last 17 years. During this time, we have taught thousands of children from every corner of the world how to find their voice and helped them develop the tools to engage in respectful civil discourse. Being an effective public speaker has always been an important skill but, at this unique moment in time, it is nothing less than crucial that we each have the confidence and skills to stand up and speak our truth. We have lost the art of how to talk respectfully and productively with people who don’t share our beliefs. I believe this is one of the biggest threats to our society. We can’t move forward if we can’t talk to and learn from each other. We need to develop the ability for meaningful dialogue that is reasoned and evidence based.
“It is nothing less than crucial that we each have the confidence and skills to stand up and speak our truth.”
We recently had someone join Westfield after a long corporate career. They were involved in summer camp where the vast majority of our instructors are former Westfield students. At the end of camp, they came to me and said how incredibly impressed they were with these Westfield teachers and their poise and confidence and flexibility in speaking and leading. She was amazed that we could ask them to speak about almost any topic in front of any audience with virtually no prep time and they consistently did a wonderful job. Most of the adults with whom she had worked, despite professional experience, had not had these skills. This is the gift of debate.
We hope you can join us for this interesting and unique opportunity! And we invite and ask you to help us spread the word. Because our program can be done from the comfort of your own home, participants can come from any corner of the world.
I hope to see you in February!
Warmly,
Ann