This year, I agreed to teach an after-school debate seminar for one of my clients. I will be blogging my planning and post-mortem for each of these classes. If I am not too ashamed of the quality of my writing, I will Tweet each entry as well.I have a bad habit of letting my blog posts stew over weeks, but for this project, I am going to try to break that habit. The rule that I am setting for myself is that every Debate Seminar blog entry will be typed and sent in a single sitting. (Probably, I will cheat and go back and edit later.)I want to be able write freely about the various barriers that I encounter as the debate course progresses, and I want to be able to say stuff about individual students, so I am going to fictionalize everything.It’s a prestigious boys school located near the center of Tokyo. We’ll call them “Otoko Gakuen.” They have asked Project GENIUS to teach an after-school debate seminar from May through the summer into the fall — probably finishing in September.Number of students: "about 10"Population: "16-18 years old." I’m assuming SHS3. Not clear about whether or not there will also be SHS1 or SHS2 kids.Speaking Ability: "pre-level 2 or level 2 of Eiken." I will not get the opportunity to meet these kids prior to the lesson.Specific Requests: "The students need to have one theme per lesson and the themes should be social issues (for example, priority seat, childcare leave, atomic power generation etc.) Also, please tell the students the theme of next lesson at the end of the lesson."Primary Points of Contact: "Mr. A or Mr. M."Other notes from our secretary: "I told him that you need to talk with him about the lesson before the lesson, but they would like us to come to the school at 14:30 on 11th because they are busy. So, if you have any questions about the lesson, could you email here? I will forward it to them."I am not surprised. One of the things am constantly pushing for is a steady interaction with the schools — getting them to articulate their needs. But this is a new client, so the default is they don’t expect to that level of service, and might at first be a little weirded out by my eagerness to talk things through with them.Assessing the situation….— I don’t know if I will I have any grading authority.The leverage that being able to grade might afford me is limited if these kids are SHS3. When they get to SHS3, Japanese kids, if they didn’t before, generally have matured to the point where they take their education seriously, but at this point, all that matters is getting into the university of their choice. So all of their reserve energy goes into studying for entrance examinations.I don’t know if these are kids are going to compete in a national debate competition. I don’t know if the kids that take this class are the ones that are less concerned about getting into college, and so might be expecting this to be an easy class.I need to work out a rubric that I am going to use for each lesson. And probably I know enough at this point to compose a workable spreadsheet. I’ll use our Smartsheet tool for that. (I’ll need to pull that together later today.) Smartsheet is compatible across all of my platforms, and allows me to set up data-entry forms that will make it easy for me to handle all of my documentation traveling to and from the assignment. Whether or not I have any grading authority, this will make it easy for me to remain accountable to everyone.— I don’t know what kind of leverage I have in terms of assigning homework. This really is key. There needs to be a tangible benefit to be gained by having done one’s homework in advance. I want to be able to have the kids do their homework on line, so that I don’t have to waste time checking homework in class. I have set up a template for hopefully getting the students to submit their homework online. But I am pretty sure that the school won’t allow me to use it. There are exceptions, but it remains the case that a lot of schools prefer that there be no activities that involve using the internet.Still this is one of those cases where you want to put the idea out there just so that it’s down on the record.The IDEA is that I want the students to reflect on the previous class by mentioning three things that their classmates said, and then listen to a sound file that will prepare them for the next lesson. If that is not possible, I will need a Plan B. It needs to be a one-way-or-the-other. If homework is not going to get done, then I need not to assign it.And now I have to go pick up my son from kindergarten. I will need to continue my planning later.