Make a list of the political and social interests of your students. Include national interests, popular topics from news headlines and local interests, such as a new city ordinance or a new state law. Focus on topics and issues that directly affect the lives of your students. For instance, you may include the closing of a local park, school bullying and a change in school funding.
Review each listed topic, considering how you can turn it into a plan of action. Study some of the popular solutions to the problem, gathered from news sources or various interest groups. Write two or three proposals for each listed topic. As an example, for school bullying, you may include a zero-tolerance expulsion policy, on campus behavioral training classes for offenders and doubling the number of school security officers.
Evaluate each proposal, writing a short list of advantages and disadvantages for each solution. Avoid pigeon-holing students into an unfavorable position by removing solutions without clear advantages and disadvantages. For instance, the disadvantages of a zero-tolerance expulsion policy may force students to defend bullying, which students may not be willing to accept. Alternately, the disadvantage of increased school security proposal allows students to argue that school security is not an effective deterrent for bullies, which is a less biased argument. Remove policies from the list if you feel as though they force unfavorable opinions.
Remove certain specifics from the proposal, to provide an additional point for students to debate. As an example, restate your proposal to read “increasing the number of school security officers” instead of “doubling the number of school security officers,” to allow students to debate the cost of increasing security and the level of additional security that may be needed.
Restate your completed proposal in a clear debate format by turning it into a full statement describing the action itself, the reason for the action and the context of the action. For instance, write the statement, “Proposed: To combat the growing threat of school bullying in high schools, the state of Texas should fund an increase in school security officers on every high school campus.”