Winter Debate Clubs at Lasting Impact! are designed to help students stay sharp, grow confident, and deepen their debate skills during their speech and debate season. These clubs provide structured instruction, guided practice, and meaningful feedback in a supportive community led by experienced, knowledgable coaches. Students will strengthen argumentation, critical thinking, and persuasive communication—skills that extend far beyond competition. Whether your student is brand new to debate or preparing for higher-level rounds, our Winter Online Debate Clubs offer a focused, encouraging environment where students from across the country learn, connect, and continue building skills that truly last. Here is the winter line up…
- NEW! LD Socratic Circle with Anne and Caleb McClure
- LD NCFCA with Ethan Tong
- Moot Court Advocacy with Ethan Tong
Get the full descriptions in the SHOP! Want to learn more about what our NEW LD Socratic Circle is all about? Keep reading…
The single most valuable skill I gained from my time in Speech and Debate was the capacity to evaluate moral frameworks. The ability to assess a study or examine the logic of an application is certainly important; but the information you receive from these analyses means nothing in the absence of a clear moral framework. Without an understanding of what the good is, and how to determine it, the work becomes useless.
This isn’t easy, though. It ultimately takes a lot of time and practice. It’s very easy to subconsciously adopt an incorrect moral framework, or focus on the argument that wins the debate, rather than the one that is the most true and important for people to hear. Every new resolution gives us an opportunity to decide what we value ethically in each new context, providing us with a thought experiment to exercise our philosophical muscle. You don’t have to like philosophy to understand its importance and ensure that you possess a baseline level of literacy.
That’s exactly what we’re hoping you’ll take away from our LD Socratic Circle, starting January 2026. The painting called “The School of Athens” shows Plato and Aristotle walking side by side, arguing about where truth is to be found. I’m convinced that dialogue about important ideas is the best way to understand them deeply. Without the opposing philosophers of my own debate career, I would never have acquired the depth of reasoning I needed in order to be successful in LD debate– and in life.
It’s with this in mind that we created the LD Socratic Circle class for this upcoming semester. We hope you’ll join us for an 8 week series of conversations exploring the deeper ideas motivating this year’s resolution: how we ought to approach the exploration and utilization of outer space. We will adopt an attitude of discovery ourselves and push each other to integrate ethical frameworks that enrich our cases and our responses to opposing arguments.
Our goal is to centralize the idea that knowing how ethical frameworks interact enables us to properly evaluate the moral questions posed by society today. This kind of thinking is rare in our broader culture, and we have a responsibility to develop it by pursuing the truth on each side of our resolution. We will hear from several guest speakers, and we will do a lot of practical work to ensure that we know how to focus our debates on the big questions and clarify them for our judges. If this sounds like something you’re looking for, or if you’ve had scheduling conflicts preventing you from joining other classes, we are happy to offer an additional opportunity. Join us on Zoom on Monday nights, starting January 5.
BIOs
Caleb McClure was the 2025 LD Champion and is known among his peers for his righteous yet curmudgeonly opposition to consequentialism. His goal is to help us return to first principles and take this year’s resolution to a new level.
Anne McClure has an MA in Faith & Culture with a specific interest in virtue ethics. She is one of the coaches of Stella Maris Speech & Debate Club, and she would love to see us stop debating definitions and focus on the big questions facing our world today.