The UWC-USA Ethics Bowl Team won third place in the National High School Ethics Bowl Championships in North Carolina after several rounds of structured ethical debates with 23 other regional teams. The competition promotes ethical debate among thousands of high school students throughout the nation – encouraging respectful, supportive and rigorous discussion. To prepare, the team met several times a week and twice a day as the competition got closer. During practices, they debated with other students outside of the team, the Debate Team and even with President Victoria Mora, who offered additional advice and perspectives.
With the support of their sponsors, Maria Weinrich(IB English Teacher) and An Nguyen (Student Support Specialist) 2nd year student coach, Ruta Rupeikyte led six first-year teammates through discussion of 16 different cases involving ethical dilemmas. Ethical dilemmas they themselves have faced are a daily discussion topic for students at UWC-USA. Georgia Howell, a first-year on the team says of the school’s Constructive Engagement of Conflict and Capstone Classes, “we’re forced to put ourselves into other people’s shoes, and see the way that others may view our situations.” She says this allowed the team to build stronger counter arguments and deliver well-rounded debates.
Georgia feels students at the school are privileged to be surrounded by such culturally diverse peers with different backgrounds and perceptions of the world. She says that the knowledge and skills they’ve gained throughout this whole experience, such as public speaking and quick critical thinking will help them in any career they choose to pursue in the future.
Photo credit: Alex Berenfeld