Correspondents

The NPDL is accepting applications for correspondents! While engaging with the parliamentary debate community on a national level, correspondents will build skills as leaders, educators, and advocates and support the NPDL's most critical projects, including the Tournament of Champions, curricular resources, and historical documentation of parliamentary debate.

2023-24 Program Goals

  1. Support NPDL’s broader mission of developing a supportive and inclusive culture, maintaining historical records, and disseminating information and resources that lower participation barriers in the parliamentary debate community

  2. Decentralize the most labor intensive portions of TOC logistics (points entry)

  3. Develop a cohort of experienced correspondents to potentially expand into editorial and supervisory roles for upperclassmen in 2024-25.

APPLY HERE

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. The first-round deadline is September 1. Correspondents may apply to one or more correspondent areas.

General Responsibilities

Behavior

Students who are not in good standing with their schools are not permitted to participate in the correspondents program.

Communication

Correspondents must:

  • Attend at least one Zoom check-in meeting every 4-6 weeks with students working on comparable projects

  • Submit a monthly progress report.

  • Respond to Slack inquiries within 48 hours.

Data

Correspondents will:

  • Record the points for each assigned tournament within 14 days from the conclusions of the tournament (minimum 1/month)

  • Record the resolutions for each assigned tournament by the second progress report following the date of assignment. (minimum 1/month)

Project Areas

Advanced Data

Advanced Data correspondents will take on an additional monthly points and resolution assignment if needed as well as pursuing a long-term project in data collection, transformation, or and/or analysis. Potential projects include:

  • managing and annotating NPDL recordings 

  • refining existing databases, tagging systems or collection methods

  • creating new datasets via surveys

  • analysis of public resources

  • transformation of existing datasets

Curriculum

A curriculum correspondent is responsible for writing and editing debate curriculum, reviewing long-term curriculum goals, and informing the board about student curriculum resource needs. Expectations include writing or editing one mini module or practice plan per month OR development of two complete reference modules per year.

Mini modules or practice plans should include materials around a cohesive theme that fill 1-2 hours and can include:

  • Specific topic area information 

  • Theory of argumentation and debate strategy

  • Discussion questions

  • Drills or activities

  • Materials such as sample slides, style guides, or worksheets

  • Suggestions for substitutions depending on ability level

Curriculum in this category should include information about the intended audience, approximate lesson timelines, suggestions for instructors to check for understanding, and explicit learning outcomes.

Reference modules are intended to provide a deep dive into a broad area of debate, such as team administration, culture building, casebuilding and argumentation, debate theory, philosophical models, research methods, middle school program development, or common parli topic areas, contextualized through descriptions, examples, case studies, etc. Reference modules should be clear about prerequisites needed to understand them. You can conceptualize these as textbook chapters.

Media

A media correspondent helps create material for league social media accounts. We are looking for people who have basic experience with engaging short-form writing, graphic design and/or video creation. Generally, a media correspondent will be expected to create 2-4 social media posts per month.

Media topics may include:

  • Congratulations to top placers at recent events or autoqualifiers, in collaboration with data correspondents

  • Highlights of published articles, in collaboration with reporting correspondents

  • Short summaries of board meetings and NPDL newsletters

  • Announcements, including upcoming NPDL events, curriculum releases, NPDL policy changes, or calls for volunteers not otherwise highlighted in newsletters

  • Student, community member, team, or alumni spotlights

Reporting

Reporting correspondents investigate and disseminate knowledge on topics relevant to the parli community. A reporting correspondent should expect to write at least two articles during the season.

Potential topics include:

  • how to implement a particular debate strategy

  • history of parli in a particular region or of a particular kind of argument

  • an exploration of how resolutions are drafted

  • current events in parli

  • an in-depth interview with a coach or current or former competitor

  • a spotlight on a team or community project

  • a research project gathering parli-related statistics

  • a nuanced criticism of a particular community practice

Deadlines:

  • Article topics must be finalized by the end of October. 

  • A plan of action (a list of people to interview, a list of data sources, etc.) must also be drafted by Nov 15

  • Rough drafts must be submitted by the end of December for the first article.

  • Final drafts must be submitted by the end of January for the first article.

  • Rough drafts should be submitted by the end of February for the second article.

  • Final drafts should be submitted by March 15 for the second article.