After honing their skills the NEA debate program for over a year from 2014 to 2015 the Savdharia twins entered 7th grade and were eligible to join their school debate team.
Where are they now?
Today, they compete for their day school in both the Orange County Debate League (OCDL) and Southern California Junior Forensics League (SCJFL).
How have they done?
On Sunday, December 13th, nine New England Academy Debaters took part in the Orange County Debate League's Emery Tournament held in Buena Park. Nearly a dozen local schools (well over one hundred students) including Buena Park Junior High, Brentwood School (Los Angeles), Fairmont Private School and Pegasus competed in this event. The tournament topics included repealing the double jeopardy law and whether a government should prioritize the needs of refugees over national interests.
The performance at this tournament marked the best yet for the NEA students as they took the 2nd place tournament award - the highest award given to an after-school academy in the OCDL to date!
On Saturday, February 6th, the New England Academy took top awards at the OCDL's Buena Park Joint Tournament. The students were matched up against six other local schools (roughly 120 students) both public and private in the OCDL's Blue Division.
Led by coach Anjali Narang, the group was made up of 6th to 8th grade students Ava A, Milin P, Sujan A, Jahnvi M, Surina A, Vivian T, Nadia A, Kathy C, Ryan G, Arav P, Sandhya G, Samantha C, Shivana D and Marcus M.
Specific details follow
As teachers we want many of the same things for our students as parents want for their children. We want to raise the next generation of adults, to stimulate the intellectual abilities of the youth, and to guide our students to become strong members of our society. To accomplish this we realized our students needed to be deeply engaged in relevant learning, to process information in an abstract way, and to strengthen their problem solving, planning, and critical thinking skills.
In the beginning of our careers we went about teaching our subjects with the books and worksheets, activities, labs, and various other teaching tools used by teachers. As we excelled in our craft, our students were quickly able to recite important factors that precipitated the civil war, draw Bohr models and note the number of valence electrons, and identify universals in test questions in order to choose the most likely correct answer. But while these were excellent ways to teach the content of our various subjects, we saw a flaw in the process. Our students were not developing into the critical thinkers that we desired. Our students were excellent at reciting content and taking tests, but they were equally good at repeating incorrect information found in books and on websites.