The Mixed Team Track has been the core of the Youth Forum since its beginning.

This track will be taught by Andrei-Iustin Mihailescu, Annushia Balavijendran, Ashley Miller, Elisa Frank, Ge Yang, Alex Dukaliskis, Lazar Pop Ivanov, Mark Woolsey, Nikki Bingham, Rob Bingham, Ronna Liggett, Seo Hee Im, Shelby Jo Long-Hammond, and Matej Pilat. The Curriculum Director will be Bill Sheffield. The Chief Adjudicator will be Andrej Schulcz.

Believing in its true virtue of multiculturalism, we create fostering atmosphere to allow for unforced exchange of ideas and standpoints to various issues of debate and areas of life. The mixed team is open for all students who will be continuing high school after the completion at the YF. This track lasts from July 28th to August 5th, 2009.

The motion for the 2009 Mixed Team Track is:

A just society prioritizes rehabilitation over retribution in its juvenile justice system.

After the Tournament of Nations organizers divide student debaters into international (or “mixed”) teams, assuring the greatest national and linguistic diversity of each team. Working together with an international team of debate coaches and trainers, the teams prepare for debates on a new set of topics. As part of the preparation process, they attend various sessions as well as work individually with their coaches and trainers. The emphasis here is on international cooperation and learning rather than competition. Following the preparation phase, international teams enter International Debate Tournament that is very much similar to the Tournament of Nations – the only difference being that debating teams do not represent their nations.

The focus of this track is on improving debating and public speaking skills such as case construction, argumentation and refutation, cross examination and delivery. Additionally participants research, discuss and provide argumentation about a specific topic chosen in advance. Participants receive basic materials that provide some information on the topic, but are also encourage to research the topic further via internet, whereby learning the skills of research, critical reading and analysis of the materials. The participants also spend considerable time on preparing cases for the mixed team competition, which takes place in the end of the track and the whole YF. In these sessions, the students not only learn how to prepare and construct a case. They also learn how to work together as a compact team. In spite of all the differences they might have because of the variety in their backgrounds, they have to learn to cooperate and help each other, to balance the strengths and weaknesses of one another, because the success in mixed team competition can mostly be predicted based on the team cohesion.

Wanna see who the winner of the Youth Forum tracks were?

Click here to find out! And this is how they prepared in the Mixed Team Track labs.

Read more about the trainers who will teach you!

Andrei-Iustin Mihailescu has been involved in the debate movement for 6 years now. He has been active in the Romanian National Debate Association as a debater, a coach and a trainer. Along with debating which he likes to call his primary crash, he is a trainer in the field of soft skills (negotiation, leadership, emotional intelligence) and teaching high school and college students about these concepts. Andrei studies international Business and Economics and hopes that one day he will become a diplomat.

Annushia Balavijendran grew up in Malaysia and graduated from university in the year 2003 with an advertising degree. She begun her involvement with the debating scene in the year 2000 and has been hooked ever since, mostly training and adjudicating. Annushia has lived, studied, worked and travelled though 11 different countries and she am fluent in English and Malay and conversant in Cantonese and Tamil. She currently works as a communications specialist with a multinational IT company and spends all my annual leave either travelling or running debate related activities...most ideal, she says, would be doing both at the same time!

Ashley Miller was a Lincoln-Douglas debater at Hunter College High School in New York. She received a BS in math from the University of Chicago. After graduation, she taught math at Archbishop Molloy High School in New York and at Peabody High School in Pennsylvania. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the economics department of Princeton University.

Elisa Frank began debating in 1999, in high school and enjoyed the opportunities to debate at local, provincial, and national levels. At university, she focused on wrestling, rather than debating until she was invited by her former high school coach to be involved in chaperoning a debate trip with his team. She took part in this, and a few other activities and loved teaching debate, and working with students. Ever since she accompanied teams and local and international tournaments as a chaperone, coach, and judge. She helped to organize many debate events, including the North American Championships and Canada’s national seminar. Her most enjoyable experiences, Elisa says, has been coaching teams on trips to the European Championships in Stuttgart, and the ITOC at Willamette University where she had a very positive experience with the IDEA team. Elisa has since co-founded a provincial organization to support debate activates in her province, and has recently been elected as a Director and bilingual debate representative for her national debate organization the Canadian Student Debate Federation.

Ge Yang’s college performance in academic achievements, speech contests, sports and organizing activities in Students Union, won her high praises from my teachers and schoolmates. She was honoured with the title of “Excellent graduate”. As a result of this, she was enrolled by Foreign Language School of Dalian Nationalities University as an English teacher in 2001. As a result she gained great confidence in her ability to excel in teaching. Moreover, being the faculty adviser of English Debate Association, she has been in charge of the training of speech and debate competition in our university since 2004 till July of 2008. As Younger comments, she is very impressed by the atmosphere of the debates and the importance of the problems discussed and that is what made it attractive. She enjoys discussions on an issue, because she believes that clashes of ideas strengthened the ties between people and enhance their senses of social responsibility.

Alex Dukaliskis holds a BA in politics with minors in philosophy and sociology from Willamette University (2004) and an MSc in human rights from the London School of Economics (2006). His research interests include international politics, transitional justice, oppression, genocide, and war. Alex spent a year on a Fulbright Grant in South Korea, where he worked in a public middle school and tutored North Korean defectors. Since 2006, Alex has been working with the Open Society Institute and the International Debate Education Association, fostering debate and open discussion in a variety of countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe

Lazar Pop Ivanov is in last year (third year) of studies on the law faculty in Macedonia. He has been involved in the civil sector from 2003 until this day. He has participated in many events, projects, seminars, events, as a participant and also as an organizer. He has been enrolled in the debate program for 6 years now. He has been teaching debate for 4 years now, He says that not only that has he never been bored , every year he finds it more and more interesting, stimulating and exciting for me. He also enjoys judging debates and he has judged a lot of debate tournaments in Macedonia as well as abroad. He has participated at the IDEA Youth Forum 2007 and has been nominated to judge the quarterfinals. He believes that debaters improve their skills through participation at tournaments as well as via workshops.

Mark Woolsey was introduced to debate in 1979 as a high school competitor. Since then, he has been both a student and a teacher in the art of debate at both the high school and the collegiate level.

He currently resides in Prescott, Arizona where I am a speech communication teacher for Yavapai College. He has had experience as a trainer in Macedonia and the Czech Republic, which were very rewarding and he is looking forward to this year’s forum.

Nikki Bingham is an Oregon University graduate. She has been to the Youth Forum in Slovenia, Estonia, Macedonia and Romania. She then took a break from the Youth Forum, unfortunately she adds, to finish off her Masters degree in Middle Secondary Education. Nikki considers herself a happy person. She wants to be involved in the discussion to both learn from others and contribute what she can. She believes that debating is NOT combative, erosive, or unpatriotic -- it is the antithesis of combat, entropy, and fascism. One of her favorite quotes is: The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ~Roseanne Bar.

Rob Bingham is from Eugene, Oregon USA. He has been a speech and debate coach at Willamette High School, where his debaters won the first ever NFL national championship in 2003 in Public Forum debate. One of those debaters is now letting his wife and him stay at his place in DC for Barack Obama's inauguration. Who says debate coaching doesn't have its perks? He has been a trainer at five different Youth Forums, going back to Slovenia in 2003. He loves to play my guitar, fish (although the Ohrid trout eluded me in Macedonia :( and travel. He looks forward to seeing old friends and being part of the trainer team in Sarajevo.

Ronna Liggett is a full time faculty member in the Department of Communication at the University of Nevada, Reno in the U.S.A.. She devotes her teaching career to the study of argumentation and debate, intercultural communication and other courses related to effective communication. “Being of member of the IDEA community has enriched her life, her perspective, and her teaching beyond measure, says Ronna. Besides teaching at home and abroad, she enjoys gardening, reading, and sewing. As a lifelong learner and teacher, Ronna brings enthusiasm, energy and a deep commitment to the learning process which debate and the IDEA Youth Forum provide.

Seo Hee Im lived in England for five years as a child and returned to Korea, her home country, at the age of eight. She majored in French at a high school specializing in languages, and was exposed to English language debating, which she believes brought out the argumentative nerd in her. Now, she is studying Political Science and English Literature at Columbia University, in the United States of America. Despite the numerous complications of being torn between different continents and cultures, Seo Hee thinks she has been blessed to have had the chance to traipse across so many different seas and borders because she firmly believes it made her learn at a young age how huge the world is, and how every day decisions people make can inflict enormous changes upon nations and the world at large. Debating has also been an enormous part of Seo Hee’s life ever since high school because she loves the way speaking and not sweating can bring out the adrenaline rush.

Shelby Jo Long-Hammond is an Assistant Professor of Communication studies and the Director of Forensics at Rocky Mountain College. She has been in the position since August 2006. She finished her graduate work in the Environmental Rhetoric and organizational Communication at the University of Montana. She has been a debate program director for the past 9 years. She has coached the Lewis and Clark College team in Portland, OR, and at the University of Montana team in Missoula before her position at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT. During her undergraduate study, she competed for Carrol College in parliamentary and policy debate for 4 years. She also studied and debated In Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in the final year of her undergraduate study.

Matej Pilat has been involved in debating for almost 8 years. He started as a debater with some achievements: he won few tournaments in the Czech republic, went to many international tournaments, won a mixed team competition at Youth Forum. Then his career changed when he started coaching a debate club in Prague and the national team of the Czech Republic. Since then he have judged more than 400 debates, coached more than 80 pupils and understood that it is more satisfying to give knowledge to young people than to
receive one.

Bill Sheffield has been involved in competitive forensics for over 27 years as both a competitor and coach. He holds a Masters Degree in Communication Studies from Eastern New Mexico University. His areas of academic interest include Argumentation, Small Group Communication, and Public Speaking. As a coach, Bill has directed programs at a variety of colleges and has qualified numerous competitors for national competition. He is also a certified international debate trainer for the International Debate Education Association, and has trained students at international youth debate forums in Estonia, Macedonia, Romania, Czech Republic and Bulgaria. He has served as a trainer and adjudicator at the 2007 FLTRP Cup Championships in Beijing, China.

Andrej Schulcz started debating while in high school in 2003. Shortly afterwards, he became a coach and judge. In 2006, he was appointed Chief Adjudicator of the Slovak Debate Association. Since then he has trained debaters, judges, coaches and teachers on several occasions. He has also written or edited several articles and handbooks on debate and argumentation. He was on the local staff of the 2007 Youth Forum and a trainer at the 2008 Youth Forum. He studies political science and sociology at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.