Fremont Debate Academy

Program Details

Register for FDA Harvey Green Elementary’s debate program by February 28 using www.fremontdebateacademy.org/harvey-green. This program is in partnership with the PTA and registration will be on a first come first serve basis.

We’re excited to start FDA Harvey Green Elementary’s eleventh annual debate program this year! 

DISCLAIMER: Because of limited bandwidth, we will be capping this year’s program at ~30-36 4th-6th 6th grade students. Students will be admitted on a first come, first serve basis. The rest of the students will be put on a waitlist.

For this year's program, 6th grade Horner students who were formerly FDA Harvey Green students may participate as well. However, students currently involved in the FDA Debate program for Horner students may not participate. The program will be split up into Novice and Advanced divisions with new debaters learning more basic techniques of case building and more experienced debaters who have participated in a FDA program learning more advanced argumentation styles. 

Over the past 10 years, Fremont Debate Academy has impacted over 5000 elementary and middle school students in 19 states & 8 countries, including thousands in FUSD through operations in 25 FUSD schools. Under our instruction, students and alumni internationally over the past few years have qualified to elimination rounds or won tournaments in prestigious tournaments over 400 times! 

This year, we’re running an 8 week long competitive debate program focusing on the Middle School Public Debate Format at Harvey Green Elementary School. Students will learn various structured forms of argumentation, and research techniques. Through practice sessions, drills, and mini-competitions, students’ public speaking skills will be vastly improved. At the end of the school year, there will be a FDA international tournament!

FDA Harvey Green Elementary Debate sessions will be held on Fridays from 5:30 to 7:00pm. There will be 8 classes for this program. The start date for the sessions will be March 7th in the MUR. Our last session will be on May 9th. We will not be having a session on April 11th due to a PTA event and will instead have a session on April 10th. We will also not be having a session over Spring Break; the dates for this are April 18 and April 25th. Note: Parents are responsible for picking their children up promptly at 7 PM right after the session.

The full list of dates for the sessions are: 3/7, 3/14, 3/21 ,3/28, 4/4, 4/10 (Thursday), 5/2, 5/9

Fremont Debate Academy’s studies about its programs exhibit strong results regarding student growth: Students participating in FDA’s debate & civics programs saw a 39.1% improvement in their self-confidence & public speaking skills, 45.9% improvement in their knowledge about the world & research skills, and 90% said that participating in FDA’s debate & civics programs has had a positive impact on their academic performance.

Feel free to direct any questions to our two FDA Harvey Green Instructors:

Prabhaavi Jagannati - prabhaavi@fremontdebateacademy.org 

Kushi Arun - kushi@fremontdebateacademy.org