Students in the Outside the Box class participated in a debate today on the pros and cons of vaccinations. The winners of the debate were Willa Dorgan and Braeden Thomas from Middle School teacher and Director of Experiential Ed Forbes Cone’s class. The two argued in defense of vaccinations.

 

Nicknamed March Madness, students from all three classes, taught by Cone, Adrian Green and Dani Goldstein, had to first win the debates held in their classrooms in order to qualify. In March Madness, each team presented their argument and then was given one minute to research and prepare a rebuttal to their opponent’s argument. Teams were then scored by a panel of judges.  

 

“The debates allow students to really practice evidence-based reasoning and to strengthen their critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity skills, which is what Outside the Box is all about,” says teacher and Director of Inclusivity Adrian Green.

 

The Outside the Box class is a required seventh-grade course where students work through challenges to teach and practice CA’s 6Cs of character, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and cultural competence.

The project-based learning class is also working on a year-long social justice research project where students research different social issues and then design a way to take action.

Later in the year, students will also be completing a design-thinking project on homelessness where they will examine community responses and then create models of small-scale “micro homes” for Denver’s homeless population.