By Vanya Zlateva | Executive Director
A new year has started with in-person events, and the BEST community is becoming stronger than ever.
We even formulated our motto: “Once BESTie, forever BESTie'' and that's the truth, we always support each other.
Thanks to your support, our third Summer Slam showcase in September managed to fundraise 1356.35 $. The sum ensured that we could continue to run our Student Leader training seminar in person at the beginning of October. Live events are much more engaging, and all of the participants were excited and motivated to keep on with the hard work throughout the academic year.
At the end of September and before the Student Leader training, a second year multi-day Coach Training was organized and was held in person in Sofia. There were 32 participants – new and returning Bulgarian teachers, new and returning Fulbright American English Teachers, and Bulgarian high school students. They participated in a variety of lectures and presentations about the competition policies and rules, piece selection, debate fundamentals, fundraising techniques and tactics to create and lead a successful BEST team in their schools. As a tradition, during the training, coaches were treated to live performances by former and current BEST competitors in the Duo, Prose, and Poetry categories. In addition to student performances, the event also featured prominent guest speakers including AUBG professor Dr. Olga Nikolova, whose workshop on Poetry Interpretation gave coaches hands-on opportunities to analyze and perform poems, and even compete in a mini competition themselves.
After the workshop, Professor Olga Nikolova said: “I haven’t had so much fun in a long time. BEST coaches are amazing and talented”. All of the coaches were impressed by her class too, and they shared positive feedback and sent “thank you” emails afterwards.
The Fulbright Bulgaria Commission suported us immensely with a grant that helped us cover all of the expenses for Coach Training.
Fall West Regional Tournament was the first in-person regional tournament since 2019. We had a record number of participants compared to the online participation – 226 students competed in Blagoevgrad, FLHS “Lyudmil Stoyanov” on 12-13 Nov 2022. The Fall East Regional Tournament was in Burgas, “Geo Milev” FLS and was held between Nov 26-27, entirely in person.
Nearly 56 judges participated in the Fall West Tournament. They supported the competition with feedback for students from 19 schools from the western part of the country.
At Fall East, we had 50 judges and participants from 19 schools from the eastern part of Bulgaria.
During the tournament, we had Student Leader training sessions, Q+A Sessions regarding rules and volunteer meetings to ensure the smooth and successful organization of the live events.
At both tournaments we had a record number of students participating in the debate category. We believe this is a result of the second year Debate Summer Camp, which was held in August and led by the experienced Debate Coordinator – Julia L. with the help of Tournament Policy Coordinator – Morgan R., both Fulbright Second year English Teaching Assistants. In terms of satisfaction rate, 80% of student participants noted that the preparation that they did for the tournament was very helpful, and that they will use the things they learned during the event in school.
Volunteer judge Maria B. said: “I have been waiting for the in-person events since 2019, and the students are becoming even more prepared. It looks like every new semester we may see better performances in all categories. That means that we all are doing a great job and I'm proud of all of you from the BEST management team, coaches and participants”.
Our Student Leader coordinators - Vili- An D. and Bilyana B. also shared some awesome posters created by Student Leaders and their teams to show their team spirit and excitement for the tournaments.
We are happy to share with you the below pictures from our events.
We thank you again for all your support and wish you a warm holiday season!
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