McCormick,+Amy

last updated: 1/6/18

I competed in LD for three years at Tahoma Senior High School in Covington, WA. This is my seventh year coaching and judging LD for Tahoma; also coaching at Bellevue HS. I have judged on the local WA circuit and judged circuit debate at UPS, Fed Way, and Stanford (out rounds at the former two). I graduated from the University of Washington in 2015 with a BA in Political Science & Economics and in 2017 again from UW with my Master in Teaching. I teach an assortment of Social Studies classes at Bellevue High School in Bellevue, Washington (AP World prep, US History, US Gov't, Contemporary World Problems).

Current Topic (Jan/Feb 2018): I've judged ~20 rounds, am reading topic-related literature

NOVICES: You don't get to run plans/CPs/DAs/Ks/other progressive arguments. Have yet to see an effective one done in front of me. Just wait til open.

tldr; Debate is your activity, make it your own. Most questions can probably not be addressed in this paradigm, so please ask me in round. Of course I have some biases, so those will be elucidated here. Good debaters will present clear claims, warrants, and impacts within their speeches and present a logical flow of ideas. This can be done with or without a traditional value and criterion framework, but justify why one ought to run these non-traditional things in round. It is to your benefit to also set up the order of importance of the levels of debate in the round, or how I ought to evaluate the arguments presented. It is also in your interest to provide voting issues, or specific reasons why you have won the round, to me. Otherwise, I will pick and chose the most important arguments, and odds are you will be less happy in that situation. My threshold for theory is probably higher than your average circuit judge; quite honestly I'd rather get down to a discussion of the topic itself and the structure of LD does not adapt itself well to the policy-adapted arguments we have been inundated with. Please note this does not mean "no theory", but 4+ levels of debate rarely seem to end in an educational round in my experience. In regards to speed: -slow for tags, author names, and years -repeat plan texts and CP plan texts at least once after first reading -pause at ends of cards so I can know when the author's words stop and your analysis/next tag begins ("end quote" works fine too), this also becomes important when tags are not tied to a number-based organization system
 * 1) 1 pet peeve right now: generic responses to case that are not explicitly linked to a specific section (how do I evaluate these things? does one card really take out case?)

In closing, if any of the above doesn't make any sense, just ask me in round. Be happy, be well, and be kind to others. Enjoy your debate round!