By David Karas | Correspondent

The Nov. 21 debate meeting, held in Barkalow Middle School in Freehold, featured a great deal of success among the St. Rose delegates, with Cassandra Dalton, Thomas Rose and Zachary Schiavone taking first in all four debates, and Miranda Dalton, Eric Ticse and Nicholas Stevens coming in fourth place in two of the debates.

“I am so proud of these students for the tremendous effort they put forward after a full day of school work,” said second-grade teacher Kathy Wall. “They were a bit discouraged after losing the first debate in October, but decided to work harder and learn from their mistakes. I was so happy to see all their hard work bring them success.”

The team from Mother Teresa went 1-4 for the day Nov. 21, but Katey Patrizio, language arts teacher and debate team coach, said that she was proud of their performance considering that the meeting was the first debate for two of the three participating students.

The Jersey Shore Debate League is a program of the English-Speaking Union of the United States, a non-profit, non-political organization which seeks to celebrate “English as a shared language to foster global understanding and good will by providing educational and cultural opportunities for students, educators, and members.”

Patrizio said that students in her school have participated in the past in what was called the Garden State Debate League, which split this past year to create the Jersey Shore division due to growth over time.

Participating students prepare the opposition and proposition of four topics, spending three weeks before each debate working on their strategy. On the day of the debate, Wall said, a topic is announced and positions assigned, and students must transfer notes prepared in advance to paper provided to them. They then meet in classrooms to debate teams from other schools.

“The students meet two to three days a week after school to practice presenting the opposition and proposition of all the topics,” said Wall. She works with the students, as does Mark Dalton, a parent of two of the students on the team and a former high school debater himself.

Patrizio spoke about the various benefits the students derive from participating in debates.

“On an academic level, the students learn about issues that are important in our world today. They learn how to research and gather information and form and defend an educated opinion based on that research,” she explained. “On a social level, students gain confidence in their public speaking and feel comfortable expressing an opinion that might be different than others in a civilized manner.”

She added, “I have seen children in this program go from being barely able to speak in the first debate of the day to engaging in lively debate, actively questioning opponents and defending their own arguments by the end of the day.”

She said that she has seen her students grow over time, and some of the older members mentor newcomers.

Additional debates are scheduled for the spring term as well.