Young Genius

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Email

younggenius110@yahoo.com

Address

110 N Santa Cruz Ave, Suite B, Los Gatos, CA 95030

Telephone Numbers

408-384-2419  
510-713-9019

Business Hours

Monday-Sunday: 10am-8pm

Directions

Tournaments


November  19,2011 from 12:30pm to 4:30 pm the  Burnett Middle School Tournament.

Saturday the 19th of November our students competed in the Fall Warm Up Speech Tournament at Peter Burnett Middle
School.  We had 9 students competing and because 6 of them were double entered we had 15 entries.  Of those 15 entries, 7 received a rating of "Superior" and 7 received a rating of "Excellent."  Most of our students received a rating of "Superior" in their main event . 


As we have watched our students at tournaments it is clear that when they are matched against students their own age, even students who get daily coaching, our students do amazingly well.  When they are matched against high school students, competitively, as one would expect, they don't do as well.  But taking our students to high school tournaments is experiential.  It is about laying the foundation for future success, and learning the skill of public communication.  Honestly, the real payoff from this activity will be 20 years in the future when our students have to stand up at a company meeting and present a proposal, or have to defend a point of view in public discourse.  It's been our pleasure now to watch former students grow up to be quoted on the front page of the New York Times, and be on the list of the top 10 lawyers under 40 in the state of California.  They are learning a life long skill.



Saturday, December 3rd, the Young Genius Debate Program attended a scrimmage hosted by the Harker School in San Jose.  Four teams competed in three practice rounds of debate on the December topic:In the United States, current income disparities threaten democratic ideals.  This was a warm up practice to get the students ready to compete in the High School Invitational tournament at Santa Clara University the following weekend.
The Harker school was gracious hosts.  We had classrooms to work in two hours before the tournament and Harker provided most of the judges as well as snacks during the competition. 
While competition was not the primary purpose of the day, our students made us proud, again, winning 2 of the top 3 speaker awards and their win loss record as a team was 6 wins and 6 losses when debating the Harker students.  Students from Harker have a debate class every day as part of their school schedule and have a very strong competitive reputation.  Our record on Saturday bodes well for the Santa Clara tournament.




Santa Clara University High School Speech and Debate Tournament, December 9-11.  

At this tournament, 8 Middle school and two High school students  as one of our parents said, were carrying the Young Genius Flag  After three days of competition at Santa Clara our students finished the day with 6 awards.  The teams of Samhita and Edlene as well as Ananya and Czarina finished at octa finalists in Novice Public Forum debate. Ananya repeated her performance as a top debate speaker getting an award for 3rd place speaker in Debate, and Samhita finished 8th out of over 100 students but did not win an award for that accomplishment.  Samhita did make the semi final round of Original Oratory with a remarkable speech on violent video games. Which as we believe should be broadcasted on National TV.
 
Our debate teams finished with an overall record at just about .500 win percentage.  As a program we are winning as many debates as we are losing.  To put this in perspective, as a High School Coach, if I were entering 9th and 10th graders in novice division of this tournament in this area, .500 is a good number.  To do this with students who are almost all in Middle School is wonderful.  I continue to marvel at how our students perform, and behave, after less than a year of involvement.  Northern California, Area 1 to the California High School Speech Association, is absolutely the strongest part of California in terms of debate.  Area 1 teams have won the CA state championship tournament every single year since 1991.  (My Arroyo Grande team won that year!)  It is to our benefit that our students can compete in tournaments of this quality this close to home.  Every time I got feedback from judges, competitors, and judges about our students it was overwhelmingly positive.

Don H.



Up Coming Tournaments:


James Logan High School Speech & Debate Tournament,  Friday, January 13 through Sunday, January 15, 2012

http://www.joyoftournaments.com/ca/jameslogan/info.asp

The Martin Luther king Speech debate tournament is national for varsity students. Anania, Czarina, Schivalika and Zunera were only miidle school debaters there.





The Cal Invitational,  February18- 20
A high school speech and debate competition hosted by the University of California - Berkeley.

http://campuslife.berkeley.edu/debate/cal-invitational/invitation


The Young Genius Educational Center speech and debate students continued their successful string of tournament results last weekend at the Berkeley Invitational tournament.
Rising freshman star Steven finished in the top 15% of students in a nationally competitive field.  Steven made the first elimination "break" by giving 7 minute speeches, without notes, after 30 minutes of preparation.  The Berkeley tournament attracts a nationally competitive field and to make the first break as a 9th grader is an extraordinary accomplishment.  We have only been working with Steven for a few weeks but his dedication to public speaking is more than evident.  He can look forward to great success!


Stanford Speech and Debate Tournament, February, 11-13 2012.

Four of six students who were competing in congressional debate broke to finales at Stanford!

Santa Clara University 2 High School Speech and Debate Tournament, March 31-Aprel 1
At this time we are preparing our middle and high school students to compete in variety of events at this tournament.  Please feel free join our team or take classes to do better with your school team.




The the  Peter Burnett Middle School Tournament, 05/19 - 05/20
http://www.joyoftournaments.com/ca/burnett-ms/info.asp


If you are a Middle school student and do not have any experience in speech and debate or have been competing already please feel free to contact us and we prepare you for this tournament.