The WVHS speech and debate club is a program that gives students the opportunity to practice presentation, developing arguments, and public speaking, as well as a range of other skills. The club’s staff advisor is Mrs. Roberts.

The two main aspects of the speech and debate club are, of course, speech and debate! Speech events are focused around presentation and public address, while debate events are done as an argumentative topic where both sides present their case. Both of these aspects are done in competition, and the club goes to meets to compete against other teams. At competitions, people get to choose whether they want to do speech or debate events. Some events are impromptu, where you are given the prompt upon arrival, and some are structured where the participants come prepared with their speeches.

At their most recent meeting, the club opened with a warm up on impromptu speaking, each having five minutes to prepare their speech about a given topic, then present it to the group. They then went into a discussion of how the competitions work, and what events each person wanted to compete in.

Speech and debate provides the opportunity to build speaking and argumentative skills, and practice them in a competitive environment. It can also build camaraderie between the students, as you are competing with your team, and at the same time meeting people from other schools.

If you are interested in joining, the speech and debate club meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school in room 217!