From Scrollers to Researchers: Building AI-Ready Graduates Through Real-World Debate

What if the best literacy tool in your classroom wasn't an app, it was an argument? Every teacher has students who won't write, won't speak, and won't engage until the lesson asks them to fight for something they believe. Brandie Wright turned her middle school classroom into a weekly debate stage, and it changed who showed up. Not just the confident students but the reluctant ones, the quiet ones. Even, the ones who had been coasting for years. This session unpacks the framework she built: structured debate as a literacy tool, AI writing support as a thinking accelerator, and a weekly routine that develops the research, reasoning, and communication skills at the core of the ISTE AI Ready Graduate Profile and connect them to the ISTE Transformational Learning Principles (TLPs). Brandie will show you what it looks like in practice, share real student artifacts, and give you materials you can use the week you return. You will leave with a replicable framework, real student examples, and the one mindset shift that made it all work: stop designing for compliance. Design for change.