**UPDATE: First class will be held Friday, September 6, 2019 with location TBA. Please email me at nishneel@berkeley.edu to be added to the mailing list and I'll update you all there with the location of our first meeting.

The objective of this course is to expose its students to urban education and youth development and train them to be effective mentors and positive role models to urban youth, while refining our students’ own rhetorical skills. We will focus on academia surrounding the activity, while working to implement what we learn through service learning. To this end, students will work closely with staff of the Bay Area Urban Debate League (BAUDL), a local non-profit organization that works with Bay Area school districts to create and maintain debate teams at inner-city schools. Participants will study and gain experience in working with urban youth, supporting veteran urban educators, and growing a non-profit organization.

The goal of this course is to engage Urban Debate as a forum for argumentation refinement and advocacy skills, so we will equip participants with knowledge of multiple different styles of rhetorical persuasion employed by BAUDL Debaters.

The course is worth 2 P/NP units.

Meetings and research assignments will engage students in reflection on the institutional, programmatic, and personal components necessary to sustain the public-private partnership of an urban debate league. Students will discuss and gather information on partnering schools and districts, theories and best practices for youth development programs, and the specific needs and characteristics of the students served by the BAUDL. By the end of the semester, students should have a working understanding of what it takes to run a successful afterschool program serving an under-resourced urban public school district.

Students will work directly with students in Oakland public schools to build and maintain strong, motivated teams. Meetings and some readings will help familiarize students with the social world of the young people served by BAUDL and aid reflection on the approaches and tactics that will most benefit those young people. Using paradigms of urban education and debate training to cut against each other, the course will encourage and support its students in developing plans and pedagogies that effectively motivate and enable the transformation of urban public school students into serious debaters and advocates. Further, students should be able to place their work in the context of urban school reform and situate it in relation to predominant pedagogical approaches