Greenhouse Forensics

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Programming is offered to schools and youth organizations during the day, after school, and Saturdays. Many of our participants perform below their grade level in English Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and Science. Our critical and engaging pedagogy provides a best practice pathway to improving academic outcomes by challenging the participant to “read the world by reading the word”. The learning needs of our participants are improved in a proven model that emphasizes the participant first. Emphasizing the student’s voice and needs first leads to commitment, increased confidence, and eventually increased competency for the participant. Struggling students improve their scores and high trajectory students improve their skills and opportunities as well.

Our learners respond in a ways traditional institutions have failed to develop within them and apply the moral and academic lessons learned in the program to everyday life. Successful participants complete their short-term educational goals and achieve long term identity changes that lead to improved moral and ethical imperatives that directly benefit the participant and our community. We provide employment, internships, and referrals for our participants to immediately apply their recent learning and leadership development.

The competitions are Intraschool and Interschool based competitions for Policy Debate (Team & LD), Parliamentary Debate, Individual Events (Oratory, Informative Speaking, Humorous Interpretation, Extemporaneous Speaking, Impromptu Speaking, Duo Interpretation, Programmed Oral Interpretation, Prose Interpretation) Round Robin style, taking place during the week and culminating on a Friday or Saturday. Swing/Championship style tournaments for debate and individual events occur on Friday evenings and all-day Saturdays. Round Robin tournaments are generally for intraschool competitions, Swing Tournaments are reserved for regionally sponsored Greenhouse teams, and Championships combine all of our competing locations in a Winter and Summer Finale. Winners receive trophies, leadership advancement opportunities, and cash.  

The Greenhouse Forensics League is intended to provide speech and debate services to students who do not have the opportunity to participate in Speech & Debate activities. Programming for the Greenhouse Forensics League occurs in day and after school programs in St. Louis City and St. Louis County, as well as online for competitors outside of the St. Louis region. 

GCI staff and volunteers facilitate the learning, mentoring, and competition portions of the programming. Our clients provide the facilities, except for our main location in the Cortex Innovation Community. Participants are grades K-12th and are divided into four levels of learning(L1-L4) as well as Rookie, Junior Varsity, and Varsity Elite levels for competitions 

The GCI curriculum is focused on facilitating a critical and engaging pedagogy for our clients. Student activities are based on over 50 Greenhouse Power Standards and anchored by numerous Missouri Learning Standards for English Language Arts, Social Studies, Theater, Science, and Math. Our activites focus on writing, argumentation and debate, leadership, oral interpretation (acting), limited prep speaking, leadership, public address speaking, entrepreneurship, and community organizing. Partnering organizations may lease the Greenhouse Curriculum, designed for years of participation, elementary through high school. 

15 years of GCI programming have generated a wealth of data that is relied upon to inform major decisions in programming, marketing, curriculum, and development.  Initial assessments and post program assessments continuously deonstrate the need to utilize forensics as a major tool in improving literacy and quality of life outcomes. The forensics program has over 200 Key Performance Indicators that are carefully logged and analyzed for each participant, as well as aggregated data for interpreting overall client/site performance and impact. Years of data analysis from thousands of participants across multiple states has revealed a significant necessity to immediately act to solve the problems we engage with daily. Our data has also reveled that our pedagogical approach to problem solving and increasing literacy skills is an overwhelming success!