"The Rhetorical Triangle"

Persuasion

There are three equally important modes of persuasion:
Logos: Be logical and reasonable. Explain research and examples. Make sense. Use your brain!
Pathos: Express yourself, be passionate and empathetic. Use your heart. Connect to the audience on a human level.
Ethos: Trust! Value honesty, intelligence, and kindness. Be trustworthy and competent.

“The Brick House"

Argumentation

Confucius told us "学而不思则亡思而不学则怠" that we need both studying and thinking. We must study, read, and learn about real-world research, but also critically think and reflect using our own reasoning, all to cogently and coherently support a clear main argument.

“The Visceral Rhombus"

Literacy

Mastery of literacy in any language requires reading, writing, listening, and speaking as the four sides of a rhombus. Nowadays, A.I. can do all of these things, so we need to develop our skills more viscerally into a fully human literacy. Reading and listening are sometimes viewed as secondary, passive skills, but these must be emphasized as equal and active components of full literacy.

“The Spiral Galaxy"

Curriculum

Learning is not a simple, linear progression. There's many aspects of debate that have to first be introduced, practiced a lot, and then guided up to a progressively higher level. Like learning a new language, musical instrument or sport, these skills must constantly be revisited and repeatedly practiced to achieve full proficiency.

My “WIMP” Model of Teaching

Practice

All the evidence-based best practices emphasize the diminishing returns of one-way lecturing, especially for younger students. Students need brief instruction with exemplar models and then plenty of practice. Debate is a Sport, and sports require tons of interactive practice.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Thinking

Many debaters can become 'successful' by merely remembering what their coach said and understanding the main points barely well enough to explain on their own. However, these are lower level cognitive skills. The students should be encouraged and expertly guided to apply current knowledge to new situations, analyze new concepts and information, evaluate ideas, and even create their own new arguments.

Pedagogy Books

Professional Development: These books serve as essential tools for any good teacher or debate coach. Along with 11+ years of first-hand experience, these have helped make me a much more effective educator.

Aristotle's Rhetoric

This is the OG beginning of rhetoric, persuasion, communication in the Western world. Especially timeless is his explanation of logos, pathos, and ethos, that we still use literally multiple times every day.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Many debaters—even excellent debate champions—are stuck around the lower half by merely remembering and understanding what their coach says and then applying it in-round, without fully analyzing, evaluating, or creating anything on their own.

Understanding by Design

This book helped me become a better teacher by focusing less on 'what I want to teach' and more on 'what they need to learn'. Effective teaching is not about the teacher; it's about the students. This book shows how to actually help the students learn what they need to learn.

Stephen Toulmin

Toulmin is like a master architect of ideas. He teaches us how to build our arguments much stronger in a careful, logical way.

Differentiation

Usually differentiation is explained in a way that sounds exhausting that you have to teach each kid a completely different way, but the best way to teach differentiation is to teach all students the same material in several different ways. This helps deepen and enrich every student's learning experience.

Rubrics

This book helped me rely more on preplanned systems of teaching and assessment instead of just trusting my ad-hoc intuition.

Jerome Bruner

“Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.”

Deeper Learning

This book is good to help me make sure I provide opportunities to help the students learn deeper for themselves instead of spoon-feeding them the information.

Research

A much(!) earlier edition of this book helped me a lot in grad school to write my Masters thesis. It's advanced but super helpful for anyone who has to do academic writing.