Mission
The mission of Victory Briefs is simple: to help more students participate in high-school debate by providing the best summer debate workshops and a professional-quality debate curriculum that teams, schools, and individuals can easily use. We hope to lower the barrier to accessing the transformative powers of debate for everyone, enriching the activity that we love by including more voices. We love that debate can change lives, teaching students how to form well-justified answers to the complex and pressing questions of our day in pursuit of finding and defending the truth.
The Victory Briefs Institute
VBI strives to provide the best summer debate instruction available anywhere. In designing our program, we are guided by a set of values that we believe are key to VBI's unprecedented success.
VBI alumni have won over 50 national debate championships across the Tournament of Champions, the National Speech and Debate Association, the National Catholic Forensic League, and the National Debate Coaches Association, in addition to hundreds of national invitationals, round robins, and state tournaments—and even world championships. What's our secret?
CURRICULUM
The VBI curriculum centers on one-on-one mentorship and active learning. Often imitated but never equaled, our flexible curriculum allows students to master whatever skills and concepts they need to achieve their goals. Many students say they learn more at VBI than in a year of school.
COACHES
The VBI faculty is a diverse and dedicated group of educators that care deeply about helping each debater reach their full potential. Our faculty is composed of the most accomplished debaters and coaches in the country. VBI instructors have won or coached the winners of every major national championship, in addition to dozens of other invitationals, round robins, and state tournaments.
COMMUNITY
Our students describe VBI as a fun family environment where they feel comfortable asking questions, making friends, and reaching outside their comfort zones as debaters. They leave camp with lifelong friendships and a love for debate, which leads many students to return for two, three, or four summers.
Classroom
Victory Briefs Classroom is an educational platform for Lincoln-Douglas & Public Forum Debate that includes digital lessons & lectures (Virtual Classroom), topic briefs, and textbooks. Designed for both debate programs and individual students, our ever-expanding library contains 100+ video lessons & lectures, 250+ activities & quizzes, ten textbooks, and briefs for each NSDA topic.
Classroom is a valuable tool for both established debaters and teams, as well as those just getting started.
For established programs, Classroom’s comprehensive lessons & activities can be used as part of a flipped classroom model, as supplemental lessons for students, or as a way to engage advanced students as teachers & mentors for younger students.
For new teams, Classroom can be a way to kickstart your program and help you get access to an excellent education regardless of your team’s structure and team resource levels. We believe that Classroom will make starting teams significantly easier by creating a comprehensive and professional-quality debate curriculum designed to be used by teachers or volunteers without any prior debate experience.
Our lessons help clarify & and teach students a highly formalized activity, making it an accessible tool for those without prior forensics experience. For teams without existing resources (e.g., years of old debate arguments), we provide activities for students to practice. Finally, for new coaches, we hope this product makes your first year more accessible, with teaching resources, like lessons, sample debate cases, and drilling resources, ready to be deployed.
