Amplifying Conversation

Each Friday afternoon, walking through the front hallway of the Upper School, you can hear the murmurs of impassioned speeches escaping from classrooms. Enter one of these havens, and you will find students learning the expanse of their language — rehearsing monologues, running debate rounds, giving feedback to teammates. These are the practices of the Speech and Debate Team. 

“There’s no better place to use your words than in Speech and Debate,” Club President Jai Spicer ’25 explains. The team encourages students to find their individual voice, performing in competitions with a plethora of events and displaying different talents. Each member can find a way of building their speaking in a manner that fits them, simultaneously learning that there is no one mode to convey their thoughts.

However, the students are only half the equation; none of these efforts would be possible without the help of the faculty coaches Shannon Castelo and Laurel Maughan, two teachers in the Upper School who lead the debate and speech portions of the team, respectively. Castelo describes the team’s start just four short years ago as “the perfect storm.” When she came to Collegiate during the pandemic, she voiced her hope to continue the Speech and Debate program she had founded at her previous school. Serendipitously, two students had already expressed interest in such a program, so with the support of the Head of Upper School, Patrick Loach, the team began.

From there, the only path was upwards. Membership began doubling each year, the number of events that students competed in vastly expanded, and close-knit bonds formed between the members and the coaches. One such debater, Senior Cameron Jones ’25, voices this connection: “This team has become more than a team to me — it’s become a family, a culture, and a passion.” When cooped up together in hours-long practices or anxiously waiting between rounds of competition, members become one collective force to push through challenges, building an environment that is not only rigorous but encouraging. Those who join the team find a sub-community inside Collegiate which both drives them and guides them to a higher level of communication. 

Student members not only find comradery within the team but in the larger world of Speech and Debate. Competitions, while a prime method to practice honed skills, are also a place to expand their worldview. Speech Lead and Collegiate Junior Hollyn Borich ’26 expresses, “Everybody has a different story to bring to the table, and it’s always important to hear other people’s identities and perspectives.” Speech events are exceptional spaces to hear these stories. In contrast to the pre-assigned topics of debate, speech members choose and prepare their own pieces fitting into specific categories, thereby combining the practice of aligning a pre-set tone with personalized experiences and topics of passion. Creativity flourishes here — establishing a space where students can use themselves and their peers as inspiration. 

The path toward improvement is one paved in this practice of sharing ideas. Communication, Castelo argues, is a necessary life skill for college and beyond. In the modern day “having the confidence to speak up in a way not just steeped in emotion but in reason” is a vital tool in expressing one’s ideas. Speech and Debate is the stepping stone in building a generation of great communicators who are able to converse with the respect and ability to see other perspectives. If students will not speak up out of fear of being “canceled” for their ideas, then important conversations are lost. With Speech and Debate, they persist.

Both in and outside of the team, educational efforts center around promoting civil discourse. Out of this notion sprung the idea of hosting debates in front of the entire Upper School during Assembly. The goal of these events are twofold — both to encourage new members to join and to provide a contrasting view of social debate apart from the hostile and misinformed voices often perpetuated by social media. Castelo believes that because of these heated exchanges meant to evoke strong reactions online, “school debate gets a bad rap.” What’s important, however, is how Collegiate chooses to approach debate: “dedicated to making the debate space better” through behaving as we wish every speaker would. To win a debate, these model events hope to prove, it is not necessary to stoop down to personal attacks or misinformation; true winning comes from the ability to both express and understand, crafting an argument that attempts to interact with the opposing viewpoint instead of antagonizing it. 

I was particularly inspired by the goal of educating students beyond the team, and volunteered to participate along with Speech member Maytal Zasler ’25. Together, we worked to create a conversation about social media censorship to debut to the School. The feeling as we walked out on stage was a burst of nerves, slight dread, and a large sense of hope for what we could accomplish. Ultimately, we both wanted to leave the audience with a level of uncertainty they may not have had going in; with complex issues like the ones we brought in front of the School, each student should be able to identify with points on both sides. Through this complexity, the team brought forth a crucial lesson that these issues are not black and white, and to think about them in such a manner is counterintuitive to their understanding. To build a true stance, you must struggle with every standpoint instead of deciding on instinct.

The second iteration of this tradition came this October, when the team modeled a partner-style debate on another politically-relevant issue: student loan forgiveness. This debate was the culminating part of a trilogy of election education for Upper School students, beginning with a guest speaker on civil discourse and a musical history lesson on the importance of compromise. Voting is the first step in building civic engagement, which is at the heart of the Speech and Debate world. Here, the lessons in communication were more vital than ever. Castelo views the exercise as a progression in scope: “we aim for impacts not just in Collegiate but going forward in our country — equipping students to be ideal citizens of the world who will forge a path in a positive direction.” 

The ultimate goal of the program is application. Speech and Debate, Castelo articulates, is “providing students tools in a toolbox that they can draw on for whatever situation they find themselves in.” The impacts of the team are not limited to one career field or one type of student; whether a student finds themselves defending their client in the courtroom or presenting to a boardroom of prospective investors in their company, these skills matter. The values of confidence, connectivity, and understanding bridge into all facets of individual success. Castelo summarizes neatly, “this is the power of Speech and Debate.”

Editor’s note: With every story we publish, our intention is to celebrate the experience of Collegiate. As part of that ongoing effort, we have been working with Upper School students, publishing stories in their own words. This piece is one such student narrative.