Golden State Academy

Golden State Academy
Where Winning Debates take place!

The Golden State Academy is one that strictly focuses on teaching students the skills of public speaking and debate/argumentation. Students not only get to learn the right skills but also get to put them into use at competitions throughout the year in what has become one of the biggest events in both middle school and high school.

Students from all over the nation-from middle school and high school-compete at tournaments hosted by high schools and colleges, with the biggest tournament being held at the end of the year called the National tournament. This tournament is the biggest student competition surpassing the National Spelling Bee. Our philosophy is simple; we want our students to have fun while learning the skills of critical thinking, decision-making and public speaking that have become extremely important in our world. We want them to make connections with their peers and our staff so as to feel like we are all family. I think our philosophy, our approach and the pedigree of our staff sets us apart from the rest.

Highly talented Team of Teachers

Our staff comes from different background but the majority of us, especially the founders, have one thing in common: We all came from the nationally ranked and acclaimed speech and debate team of James Logan High School in Union City, CA. This was a team that was featured on Oprah Winfrey's show and a documentary on PBS. We all had a lot of success as competitors either going far into elimination rounds or winning at the State and National tournament in speech and debate in our respective events. We have now continued that success as coaches at not only The Golden State Academy but at our day jobs at public and private schools in the Bay Area like Mission San Jose High School, Evergreen Valley High School, Miller Middle School and Amador Valley High School. Unlike other programs that have rigid curriculum, we are not afraid to try unorthodox approaches to getting kids not only excited about the activity but also to be successful. From playing games that get kids out of their shell to watching videos and having general discussions about what the kids believe is correct or incorrect about the debate topic, our classes are not lectures but are a practice in dialectic. Instead of simply telling the students what is the correct or incorrect way of approaching the activity, we are not afraid to let them experiment. We let our students take risk knowing that they may fail but that they will come out stronger and more likely to succeed on their own after such failures. This has helped us create State and National champions at the middle school and high school level. We are not about creating cookie cutter molded students; we are here to bring out our students best characters within them. We

help create more well rounded students that will not only be successful at getting into their post-secondary institution of their choice but to be successful in interact- ing and engaging with the adult world including the corporate world where the skills we teach are a highly valued but hard to come by. Our class size also sepa- rates us from other programs as we strive to maintain an 8 to 1 student to teacher ratio. Whenever we go above that, we hire more staff to be able to help with the student workload. Our staff is a diverse mix of coaches not just coming from James Logan but from other successful programs in the region. We are an ethnically diverse group of coaches and welcome all no matter what their background is, be it first generation immigrant or American born.

We believe that all should take our classes that have a proven record of success rate. Our students are expected during the school year to be in class for 2-4 hours a week.

Our classes are two hours each and start at 4:00 PM or 6:30 PM. The days vary from lectures-on- week, to case-editing and presenting another week to having actual practice debates or performance- of-their- speech-event in front of the class with feedback NOT just from the coaches but their peers as well. Our summer schedule is a little different as depending on whether they are doing a full day camp or half day camp and in accordance to their experience, we will have students either begin with the basic skills needed for each event or jump right into the debate topic or their speech-event. Our summer classes are two- weeks long and will help get students ready for competition for the school year either with us or with their school's team. We will be having summer specials for those that sign up early, so please keep an eye out for our early bird sign up. We hope that your child joins our program. In addition to having fun in our classes and at the many competitions we go to during the school year, they will walk away feeling more confident about themselves. You won't regret them joining our class even when they begin to argue with you about everything, given their newly acquired skills!