The Lincoln-Douglas Seminar
With Mike Bietz
26/27 full-season support over two terms,
Twenty-three lectures and twelve one-on-one sessions a term,
taught by a Tournament of Champions Hall of Fame coach.
WHO TEACHES IT
TOC Hall of Fame, 2024. First coach from Southern California and first Asian American inducted
President, National Debate Coaches Association, 2009 to 2011
Gold Key Society inductee, Emory University, 2022
TOC Advisory Committee, since 1996
Chuck Ballingal Community Service Award, University of Southern California, 2018
Minnesota Debate Coaches Association Coach of the Year, 2004
Assistant Coach of the Year, Minneapple, 1996
I have spent thirty years building high school debate programs. I started the Lincoln-Douglas program at Edina in Minnesota from nothing and took it to back-to-back state championships. I then spent seventeen years at Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles, where the program had one debater when I arrived.
My programs qualified more Lincoln-Douglas entries to the Tournament of Champions than any other during the same period, 98 of them, and more than 100 counting every debate event the TOC holds. My students have won national championships at the TOC, NSDA Nationals, NDCA, and Novice Nationals, including two TOC champions and two NSDA champions. In 2004 two of my debaters won the TOC and the NSDA national championship in the same season, which no other coach has done. I am a past president of the National Debate Coaches Association, have served on the TOC Advisory Committee since 1996, and was inducted into the Tournament of Champions Hall of Fame in 2024.
I include that record for one reason. Ask any of those students what I talked to them about, and it was not winning. Whether a judge votes for you is not in your control. What is in your control is whether you understand an argument better this week than you did last week, whether you saw a response coming, and whether your rebuttal did what you meant it to do. That is what we worked on, and the results came out of it.
FROM A FORMER STUDENT
“Mike Bietz was one of the truly exceptional teachers I've had in my life. As coach, he cultivated a team environment that was both encouraging and supportive. He fostered our curiosity and motivated us into hard work. He taught us to navigate the emotions of competition, to ride the highs and lows. Learning to debate was a transformative experience for me. I am forever grateful that Mike Bietz was my coach.”
Ben Sprung-Keyser
Harvard-Westlake '11. Harvard College '15. Rhodes Scholar
Associate Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania NSDA Lincoln-Douglas National Champion, 2010, as a junior. World Universities Debating Champion.
CREATING THE PLACE I WANTED TO SEND MY OWN DEBATERS
I know what practice looks like once the season is going: a tournament that weekend, a new topic in two weeks, twelve kids who each need something different, and maybe ninety minutes a week to do all of it on top of running the program. You triage. You work on the cases that are going to be read on Saturday.
I heard about this from parents constantly, even at a program that had everything. They could see their kid wanted more than any one coach can give twelve of them at once, and they were right. The student wanted to go deeper on something, or did not quite understand an argument and needed someone to sit down with them.
So they filled the gap wherever they could find it. A YouTube video from someone who debated for one season. Advice from an older teammate who half-remembered it. A camp lecture from two summers ago.
The students who got the most out of debate were the ones who ran into an idea partway through a season and could not let it go: a theory of justice, a school of criticism, a question they had never thought to ask. Ten years later that is still what they are doing something with. Going from one tournament to the next does not leave room for that. Months of steady work do.
I always wanted a place I could send those students. Somewhere that would teach them, not just hand them arguments to read. There was never one.
This is that place.
When Your Season is Over
The question I heard most often from parents was never about a tournament. It was some form of: what should we do between now and camp? A student who is into this wants to keep going, and the season has just taken away the reason to. I never had a good answer, and I do not think most coaches do.
Tournament calendars end at different times depending on the state and the circuit. Some students debate their last round in December. Some are still going in April. So the year is sold in two halves, and you take the ones that fit.
Fall Term, September 1 to December 31. Runs alongside the season. Everything we do is on the topic your student is about to compete on.
Spring Term, January 1 to April 30. Runs as the season winds down and the pressure comes off. For students still competing it covers the Jan/Feb, which is what the Tournament of Champions and the NDCA Championship both use. And for those who continue on with the Mar/Apr topic, we’ll cover that too. For students who are finished, it is the stretch where they can actually get better.
What the season does not leave room for
Learning a language works the same way. Immersion does something nothing else can, and three weeks somewhere nobody speaks yours will move you further than a year of classes. Then you come home. Whether you can still speak it next year comes down to whether you kept practicing, most days, for months.
Debate is not different. Camp is immersion and it works. The season is where you use what you already have, because there is a round Saturday. The months in between are the practice, and they are the part almost everyone skips.
Bloom's taxonomy is the usual way of describing what gets lost. Remembering and understanding sit at the bottom. Applying sits in the middle. Evaluating and creating sit at the top. During the season a debater lives in the middle, applying what they have, because the calendar does not leave time for anything else. Asking why an argument works, and building one that did not exist before, take time.
The levels also stack. Nobody uses an argument strategically after nine months of forgetting it, and a student who spends the fall relearning what they knew in December never gets past the middle.
When the season ends, that time exists. That is the part the best debaters do not skip.
What your student has already put in
By the time a season ends, a debater has spent hundreds of hours on this. Weeknight practices. Saturdays that started before six. Rounds that went badly and the work afterward to understand why. That is your student's investment more than it is yours.
Skills go stale when they are not used, and much of the fall gets spent climbing back to where they already were. A student who keeps working through the spring starts next season ahead of where they finished this one.
Families already invest in this activity. Camp in the summer, entry fees and travel during the season. The months after the season are the part that usually gets nothing, and they are the months when a student stands to gain the most.
This also costs a fraction of a summer program, for a plain reason. There is no travel, no housing, and no residential staff. What you are paying for is instruction.
Why it is built this way
A program that stopped when the tournaments stopped would be a program about tournaments. What I care about is whether your student gets better at this, and the months after the season are when that happens fastest.
How this works with your school program
This is a class. I spent my career running school programs, and I built this seminar for students who are on one. Your student competes for their own school, and nothing here replaces their coach.
Most of a head coach's week goes to work only they can do. Entering the tournament, arranging travel, finding judges, answering parent emails, sorting out whatever happened between two students on Tuesday, and getting everyone on the bus Saturday morning. Practice time is what is left after that, and it goes to the rounds happening that weekend. Teaching philosophy and argument theory is the part someone else can take on.
That is what I teach. The Core Lecture is philosophy, theory, kritiks, research, and speech construction. The Topic Lecture is topic analysis: what the terms mean, where the ground is on each side, what the literature says, and how the resolution is being debated. Office Hours are where I work with one student on what they specifically need, which is not always what the group needs that week.
In Office Hours we work on a student's actual case. This contention is not doing what you think it is. This card does not say what you need it to say. Here is the response you are going to get, and here is how to word the answer. We work through blocks the same way.
What I do not do is the file production itself. I am not writing cases or cutting cards, and I do not run a shared evidence pool, coordinate prep among students, or give pre-round or opponent-specific coaching. What a student learns here is theirs, and they are welcome to share notes with their teammates.
Whether you tell your coach is up to you. Most families treat this like any other class. If your student's coach wants to be involved in their work here, I am glad to make time for that at any point in the season.
For coaches. If you coach a student here, you get the full syllabus, every recording, and every handout, all season, at no cost. You do not have to ask each time. I would also welcome your input on what to cover. If your students are struggling with something, tell me and I will build a lecture around it. And if you have a question about anything in this activity, ask me, whether or not you have a student here.
What you get and when
Think of it as taking a college course in debate while you compete. Four things, and they are the same four in every term.
Lectures. Twenty-three a term, sixty minutes each. The Topic Lecture runs every Tuesday at 6:00pm Pacific and follows the current resolution: what the terms mean, where the ground is on each side, aff and neg case construction, and block building. The Core Lecture runs every other Wednesday at the same time and covers what applies to every topic: Kant and deontology, utilitarianism, social contract theory, structural frameworks, kritiks, research method, and speech construction. Students submit questions during the week, and I read all of them and use them to decide what gets covered.
The Library. Every lecture recorded and posted within 24 hours with its handouts. A student with a conflict misses nothing except the value of the live lecture. Each term has its own Library, and it stays up through the end of the following term. Fall recordings are available until April 30, Spring until December 31.
Community Slack. Where the class continues between lectures. Ask a question when it comes up and I answer it. It is open at any hour, and when I am asleep another student often is not. Students find each other there for drills and practice rounds, and they answer each other's questions, which is often how the useful stuff gets learned. It is moderated, and the conduct rules go out with enrollment.
"Mike explained complex ideas very clearly and was easy to talk to. He was also willing to answer questions via email outside of meetings, which was always helpful at debate tournaments."
May, student
Office Hours. Twelve a term, thirty minutes each, one-on-one. This is where the teaching gets specific to one student: what they are working on, what they keep getting wrong, and what they are ready for next. Short and focused by design. Review a recorded round, rebuild a block, work through a case before the weekend. Booked through my calendar, slots most weekdays and weekends by request.
How they work together. The lectures are where the material gets taught. The Library holds all of it, so a student can go back to any lecture whenever they want. Slack is where they can ask me something, any day. Office Hours are thirty minutes on whatever they need.
"Coach Bietz is always prepared for every lesson and provides advantageous advice. He maintains consistent contact and is always easy to reach."
Jundi, student
The time commitment is about an hour and a half to two hours a week. That was a deliberate limit. Anything more does not fit on top of school team practice, tournaments, and a student's own prep. In busy weeks, take the time off, the lectures will be there waiting for you, and the Slack can keep you caught up.
What we cover
Core Lectures follow what students are asking about, so this is a sample rather than a schedule.
Kant and deontology · Utilitarianism and the objections that work · Social contract theory and the veil · Structural frameworks · Turning a theory into a value and criterion pair · Skepticism, permissibility, and presumption · Anatomy of a theory shell · Answering theory without panicking · Reading a K without having read the book · Answering a K you have never seen before · What a card actually says · Finding literature that is not on the wiki · The 1AR: triage · The 2NR: collapsing · The 2AR: what to say when you are behind
The philosophy syllabus runs on a rotation across terms, so a student who enrolls more than once gets new units rather than repeats.
Topic Lectures follow the resolution.
What the resolution actually asks · The strongest affirmative · The negative's best ground · Case construction on both sides · Building blocks
The calendar
Fall Term runs September 1 to December 31. Spring Term runs January 1 to April 30. Each delivers fifteen weeks of instruction. The calendar ranges are longer than that because of skip weeks around regular school breaks. The full season calendar goes out before Sept 1.
You can start either term. Fall and Spring are sold separately and each stands on its own. Enrolling in both is cheaper than enrolling in each.
TUITION
On your own schedule
Library
$495
per term · $895 for both
- Lectures by recording, not live
- That term's Library
- Community Slack, with me and the class
- Submit questions for the lectures
- Office Hours not included
- Office Hours at $85 for 30 minutes
In the room
Live
$995
per term · $1,895 for both
- 23 lectures a term, live
- That term's Library
- Community Slack, with me and the class
- Submit questions for the lectures
- Office Hours not included
- Office Hours at $85 for 30 minutes
In the room, plus one-on-one
Live with Office Hours
$1,795
per term · $3,395 for both
- 23 lectures a term, live
- That term's Library
- Community Slack, with me and the class
- Submit questions for the lectures
- 12 Office Hours a term, 24 for both, good through May 31
- More Office Hours at $85
Everything includes the Library, Community Slack, and the member rate on Office Hours at $85 for thirty minutes. What changes is whether you are in the room for the lectures, and whether Office Hours are included.
Payment plans. Forty percent at enrollment, then five monthly payments. Same total either way, no interest and no fee.
Terms. Fall runs September 1 to December 31. Spring runs January 1 to April 30. Fifteen weeks of instruction each.
What it compares to. Six hours of one-on-one coaching at my standard rate is $1,080 on its own. The lectures, the Library, and Slack account for the rest.
Live seats are capped at 20 students. Library has no cap. Tuition is otherwise paid in full at enrollment, with a full refund before the third lecture.
If cost is the obstacle, email me. Library at $495 gets your student every lecture and the Slack. If that is still out of reach, write anyway. I would rather work something out than have a student miss the term.
WHICH ONE SHOULD YOU PICK?
First: can your student generally make Tuesday evenings, and every other Wednesday?
If yes, take Live or Live with Office Hours. Being in the room is the difference. A student in the room asks the question the moment something stops making sense, instead of writing it down and hoping it comes up later. They hear what everyone else is stuck on, which is usually the thing they were stuck on too and would never have asked about.
Missing a week is normal. There is a tournament, there is a test, there is a family thing. The recording is up within 24 hours and you come back the next Tuesday. What matters is being in the room most of the time, not all of it. Live seats are capped at 20.
If no, take Library, $495. Practice runs late, there is a sport, or 6:00pm Pacific is 9:00pm at your house. Every lecture is posted within 24 hours, and you are in Community Slack with everyone else. That second part matters more than it sounds. You are in a room with the other students in the class, asking questions, answering theirs, and finding people to run drills and practice rounds with. Plenty of students will do well this way.
Then: do you want regular one-on-one time?
Anyone enrolled can book an Office Hour at $85 for thirty minutes whenever something comes up, in any tier. Take Live at $995 if that is enough, and your student has a coach who already gives them individual attention.
Take Live with Office Hours at $1,795 if you want that time built in. Twelve sessions a term is close to one every other week, which is where most of the individual progress happens: reviewing a round, rebuilding a block, working through a case before the weekend. It also costs less than buying the same twelve separately.
If you are not sure, book a call and we will work it out. If none of these is right for your student, I will tell you that.
FrEQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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Lincoln-Douglas. The Core Lectures are useful to students in other formats, but the Topic Lectures follow the LD topic.
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Watch the recording. It is posted within 24 hours with the handouts and stays up through the end of the season.
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Then take Fall Term and stop there, or take Spring Term as their offseason. Core Lectures never depended on the competition calendar, and Spring is when a student finally has time to work on the things the season never leaves room for.
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No. Most families treat this like any other class. If you want something in writing that explains the program, ask and I will send it.
However, involving your coach might allow us to coordinate so you’re getting the best educational experience.Not necessary, but might be nice.
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Yes. Join anytime.
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No. Topic Lectures work through the current resolution, so there is topic work, and what that means is topic analysis. I do not write cases or blocks, run a shared evidence pool, coordinate prep, or do pre-round or opponent-specific coaching. The syllabus is public and coaches get full access to everything.
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Middle and high school students competing in Lincoln-Douglas. If you are unsure whether the level is right, book a call and we will talk it through.
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The recordings and handouts are for enrolled students. But you can feel free to share your notes. If your coach wants them, they can have the whole season at no cost. Just have them email me.
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Through the end of the term you enrolled in, plus a month. Recordings are for viewing and are not downloadable.
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Yes. They will be around normal school breaks. I will release a full schedule before September 1.
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Planned changes get a week's notice in Community Slack, and last-minute ones get posted as soon as I know. A term has more weeks than the the number of lectures I guarantee, so a moved lecture gets absorbed. If I ever finish below lecture, I refund the difference.
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Each one is thirty minutes, booked through my calendar, and you use them whenever you want until May 31. There is no monthly allotment. A session canceled with less than 24 hours notice counts as used.
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Full refund before the third lecture, less the standard rate for any Office Hours you have already used. After that, tuition is committed, but every lecture is recorded and the Library is there for the rest of the season.