Achievement First Speech Team

Our Speech & Debate Team at Achievement First Brooklyn High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn includes some of the best kids you'll ever meet. They've been working hard all summer on debate cases, original oratories, extemp skills, oral interpretation pieces, and even humorous interp and a duo. Our small team is growing quickly and this year we have over forty kids who want to compete.  Unfortunately, our school notified me last week that there are budget constraints this year coming from the network and district level that will keep us from bringing our kids to local tournaments and to regional ones like Yale, Villiger, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, and States.  

This is the part where, if we were a private school like most schools that do Speech & Debate are, parents would just step up and make up the difference. But for many of our parents - who, by the way, are some of the hardest working, most inspiring people I know - that's just not an option.   We're a Title 1 school, which means that about eighty percent of our kids qualify for free/reduced lunch. 

These kids have made this team their home away from home, and they work hard every single day to find their voice through their pieces and their debate cases.

And all of this despite the fact that the beginning of our school year has seen some scary stuff: several students of our school have been attacked by a local gang after school these last few weeks.  When we weren't allowed to practice after school because of safety reasons, our kids were undeterred. They started coming in at 7am and on Saturdays (and even working with coaches over the phone on weeknights!) 

Please, please consider chipping in to help us meet our goal this year so we can give these great kids the same opportunities to compete that kids who go to wealthier schools have.  Thank you so much.