Winning Words:

Congratulations Nalika Vasudevan, Winner of the first CKP Unity Award

The students in the Winning Words after school program have been working on writing and performing their own plays since March. It is now time for us to watch the finished product and to celebrate their success. Below you will find the details and schedule of the final performance. Thank you all for your participation in and support of this important program.

Date: Saturday, June 7th, 2008
Location: Bartlett Arts Rehearsal Space (5640 S University Ave)
Schedule of Events:
11:00 AM- Bus picks up at Donoghue Elementary School (707 E 37th St)
11:15 AM- Bus picks up at Shoesmith Elementary School (1330 E 50th St)
11:20 AM- Bus picks up at Canter Middle School (4959 S Blackstone Ave)
11:30 AM- Bus picks up at Christ’s Way Baptist Church (1210 E 62nd St)
11:40 AM- Bus picks up at Jim Fisher Center (645 S Michigan Ave)
11:45 AM- Bus picks up at Betsy Ross Elementary School (6059 S Wabash Ave)
11:55 AM- Bus picks up at Parkside Elementary School (6938 S East End Ave)
12:05 PM- Students arrive at Bartlett Hall and Check-In with instructors
12:20-1:20 PM- Warm ups and final rehearsal
1:20-2:00 PM- Lunch
2:00-3:15 PM- Performances
3:20-4:00 PM- Awards
4:00PM- Bus picks up students at Bartlett and drops them off at their home schools.

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The Winning Words Debate Tournament will take place this Saturday, March 15th from 9:30am to 4:00pm at Harper Memorial Library. Upon your arrival you will be given instructions on where to go and what to do.

Buses: The buses will be at O’Keeffe at 8:45am promptly, and at each of the subsequent schools a few minutes after that. The bus will not wait at any school (We have discussed the importance of being prompt with the bus company), so emphasize to the students that they all need to be waiting in front of their schools at 8:45am.

T-Shirts: These will be provided to the students when they arrive. They are not required to dress up, but are encouraged to wear something that they can put a t-shirt over.

Families: We encourage families to join us and watch their students debate; It is up to the staff member in charge at your school whether or not they are allowed to ride the bus.

Food: A morning snack will be provided for our eager debaters when they arrived and lunch from Pot Belly’s will be provided for the students and instructors only. Parents and Families are not guaranteed food, so they will have to bring their own food along.

TEACHERS!: The teacher/coach from each school absolutely needs to be there this weekend. We will make sure to communicate this to all of them, but if instructors get a chance to talk to them before we do, make sure they know this. They, or some staff member from the school, will need to be present for THE ENTIRE DURATION OF THE TOURNAMENT and will NEED TO RIDE THE BUS with the students. This is not something we can help. There are liability issues, and if we want use of the buses/classroom spaces, we need to have the staff members there.

A Note to Instructors:YOU MUST PRE-REGISTER YOUR TEAM WITH RACE WRIGHT (rwright@uchicago.edu) BY WEDNESDAY - we must know how many teams are going to attend on Saturday in order to organize the rounds in advance.

We will be giving out awards and we want this to be a memorable and exciting experience for our debaters which requires a fair degree of coordination and organization.
If you have any questions regarding the upcoming Debate Tournament this Saturday, do not hesitate to post your question or concern as a comment on this blog.

One of the Coordinators of Winning Words will get back to you as soon as we can!

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Welcome to the new Winning Words blog! “Winning Words: Verbal Arts for Democratic Practice” is a program of the Civic Knowledge Project at the University of Chicago– http://civicknowledge.uchicago.edu We hope that this blog will help all the people involved in Winning Words share information and coordinate their activities. Whether you are involved in the afterschool debate programs or one of our youth center programs, you should try to get to know others involved in these activities and share helpful information about such matters as school closings, school contact information, urgently needed materials, etc. Thank you all for your wonderful work–I hope this blog will make life a little easier! Best Wishes, Bart (Bart Schultz, Director of the Civic Knowledge Project, University of Chicago)

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