In June 2016, Kudos College of Youth Leadership attended the National Middle School Speech and Debate Tournament in Utah with 28 participants and again received excellent results. For the fifth (5th) year in a row, Kudos was awarded the School of Excellence in Debate, an honor only 5 schools receive each year.

According to the Nationals’ published results, Eric Gao and Matthew Zhang defeated 98 competitors to advance to the final eight in Policy Debate, which is rare for 7th graders. Thomas Chon and Alexander Liang advanced to the top 16 in the same event. In Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Purvaja Balaji advanced to the top 16 and Olivia Kaneko to the top 32, among 91 contestants. Helina Zhao and Alex Liu placed in the top 32 among 126 teams in Public Forum. Anabell Xu and Raymond Mo won 4 rounds out of 6, and teams Emma Chen / Nanette Zhang and Aaron Zhang / Aaron Lee both won 3 rounds each.

Kudos Principal Laura Lin said this year’s Nationals hosted a record-breaking 136 schools from 33 states, and the overall strength of the schools preceded previous years. The Kudos team was aided by many parents that volunteered their time and efforts. This enabled the students to perform well.
Coaches Scott Wheeler, Andrew Rothschild and Andrew Perez were top performers back in their respective high school debate teams, and they did an exceptional job guiding the Kudos National team. Ever since the topics were announced for the Nationals on May 1st, they’ve been working tirelessly to prepare students!

Looking back at Kudos’ tournament history in the past six years, Kudos is one of only two schools that received the School of Excellence in Debate for 5 consecutive years (2012-2016), with the only other one being the hundred-year-old private Harker School in Northern California. In the 136 schools that participated this year, 34 were from California. Kudos earning the distinction of being one of the top schools is a great honor to uphold, and we wish to ride this success into all future tournaments.

Principal Lin indicated that her goal with Kudos is not to make every student into a competition winner, but to improve every student’s skills in communication, increase his or her confidence, and help them become leaders of tomorrow.

These effective communication and critical thinking skills that are at the core of the Kudos spirit and philosophy, are considered to be so important within the U.S. education system that they have been strongly emphasized in Common Core standards.

But the skills did not come easy. Half of all Kudos National Team members have been trained with Kudos since elementary school.

Their skills will help them become strong leaders of tomorrow.

11th grader Jerry Wang achieved a remarkable achievement. He won the Nationals High School division Policy championship this year representing his high school. In 2013, he won the Nationals Middle School division Policy championship representing Kudos. For both championships, he was coached by Kudos Head Coach Scott Wheeler. It is extremely rare for any student to achieve either of these great successes; but Jerry, in winning both championships, is really a Policy Debate legend!

The fall semester registration is ongoing; we welcome all parents to inquire about our class offerings. Tel: 626-286-6889. www.KudosEducation.com