CANADA'S PREMIER DEBATE ACADEMY
Led by world renowned speech and debate coach Frankie Cena
In 2016 Frankie Cena decided to start FDT Academy. The name says everything. Our goal is to foster a passion and talent for debate and speech in our students.
Our dynamic team of instructors are led under the guidance of Frankie Cena with his 10 years of success as a coach of debate and speech. Frankie's skills are sought after by students around the world and at FDT we will go the extra mile to ensure our students reach the highest levels of success possible.
Read through our website or contact us for more information.
Explore our new Academy Space at West Broadway and Cypress!
Stay up to date on how Frankie Cena's students are doing at competitions both locally and around the world!
This weekend was the annual BC Provincial Speech Championships. We have exciting news to share with you. 13 FDT students will be going to Speech Nationals this year. We are pleased to announce that Nicholas Viegas won 1st place overall in the Senior Division. Moreover Joyce Chen came 3rd, Angelina Zhang came 4th, Judy Rhee came 5th, Anthony Chu came 6th. In the Junior Division Natalie Viegas came 2nd overall, Nora Zhu came 3rd, Katherine Feng came 5th, Jena Yue came 6th, Eric Li came 7th, Hailey Chen came 8th, Caitlin Mah came 11th and Mia Tsao came 12th. We are so happy with all our students and their amazing work. Now begins the hard work to prepare for Nationals!
FDT has just returned from the snow covered campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where we computer in the Tournament of Champions for the World Scholar's Cup! Our two teams qualified after competing in the global rounds in either Melbourne or Barcelona and they had a blast competing against the cream of the crop from around the world at Yale.
Here are some of the outstanding results. Both of our teams did well in debate. The team of Vicky Zhang, Fiona Li, and Jolin Yu won a Silver medal as a team. The team of Julia Guo, Vanessa Zhang, and Aurora Zhang won a Gold medal as a team. Furthermore our students performed well individually.In Individual Writing, Aurora, Julia, and Jolin all won Silver medals. In the Scholar's Challenge, Fiona won a Silver medal for Literature subject as did Jolin, while Aurora won a Silver medal in Social Studies, Vanessa won Silver in Art and Literature, and Vicky won a Gold medal in Art. Finally in Individual Debate, Jolin and Julia won Silver medals, and Fiona and Vanessa won Gold. Moreover, in addition to winning a Gold medal, Aurora placed 36th individually, in a field of hundreds of the world's best junior debaters!
Its been another outstanding UBC Fall High School Tournament for FDT Academy. Lets start with the results. Out of 8 teams breaking to Quarter-Finals in the Junior Category, 5 were from FDT. Congratulations to Peter Zhang and Michael Wu and Athens Wu and Jena Yue for breaking to the Quarter-Finals. Further congratulations to Eric Li and Jonathan Chu who made it to Semi-Finals. Finally, after a contentious Final round between FDT students Anthony Chu, Jason Guo, Sarah Sheng, and Angela Lu, we are pleased to announce your Champion Junior Team was Jason and Anthony! We want to still commend Angela and Sarah who were well deserving of being Finalists.
That's not all. We had great results in the senior category as well. We had multiple teams break to the Semi-Finals including Saara Meghji and Angelina Zhang and Kiran Basra and Maggie MacInnis. We would also like to congratulate Ellen Li and Vivian Gu and Leo Wang and Judy Rhee for being finalists! We are so happy with the final results and want to congratulate all of our instructors and students for their hard work in the past few weeks.
This weekend two FDT teams along with Tonya and Arsalan, traveled to Ithaca, New York to participate in the the Alfred Tuna Snider World Schools Debate Tournament at Cornell University.
We want to congratulate FDT Red for breaking to the Quarter-Final round at the tournament! The team consisted of FDT students Jamin Feng, Jason Guo, Sarah Sheng, Jessica Chen and were joined as well by Naomi Panovka, who is currently on the Canadian National Debating Team. We also want to congratulate FDT Blue who very narrowly missed breaking to the Quarter-Final. Congrats to Kelly Ho, Nora Zhu, Grace Lee, Angela Lu, and Stanford Guo for doing so well!
In terms of speaker awards we want to congratulate Jamin Feng for placing as the 4th place speaker in the entire tournament, Naomi for placing 9th, and Grace for placing 10th.
All in all a great tournament and we hope to be back in the future!
On October 19 several of our instructors and staff were invited to the inaugural Canada Sunshine Foundation Establishment and Awards Ceremony in Richmond. Anna, Arsalan, Bianca, Cathy, and Tonya all enjoyed this excellent event and Arsalan even had the opportunity to deliver a moving and inspirational speech about the importance of youth and giving back to the community.
Several of our own students are members of the Canada Sunshine Foundation. They were presented awards by our instructors at the ceremony and they were celebrated for raising over $3,000 for the Canuck Place Children’s Hospice which provides palliative care to children and families in BC.
We are so grateful to have been part of an event that celebrates such important accomplishments and look forward to an even bigger and better event next year.
This weekend the first ever Provincial Qualifier for the BP National Debate Championships was held at Crofton House Academy. It was an exciting tournament featuring some of the best junior debaters in the province. FDT is so happy to announce some excellent results!
We want to congratulate Alice Xu, Eric Li, and Aurora Zhang for their 11th,12th,and 13th place speaker rankings. Additionally We want to congratulate Aurora and Alice for breaking to the Semi-final round as well as Jesse Liu who made it to the final round with his partner and qualified for the national BP tournament.
In 2004, I made it to the finals of the Burnaby School District's Annual Grade 7 public speaking competition. I didn't win – but placing 2nd – still changed my life. It inspired in me a love of public speaking and sent me on a journey I am still on today as the owner of a speech and debate academy, and also as one of the hosts of the prestigious Miss World competition. Earlier this year, 14 years after I competed, I was invited to be a guest judge at the Burnaby District Finals. I saw the top 8 students in Burnaby, who had advanced to this final event after having excelled at their school and regional events. These kids were eloquent, intelligent, and inspiring. I was overwhelmed with their talent. A huge part of my life mission is to give back to young people in my community and around the world. Before the winner was announced, I decided to make a special announcement of my own. All 8 Finalists would win $3000 scholarships which would provide them with a full year of speech and debate coaching at FDT Academy! I am so honoured to give them an opportunity that I wasn’t given as a kid to help them one day become world champion speakers and debaters.
- Frankie Cena
Most all of our graduating students have already began their first semesters at university. But did you know that universities in the UK start later? Just last week one of FDT’s brightest instructors and former students finally found herself at the university of her dreams.
Read our interview with Rosa Rahimi about why she choose to attend Cambridge University after a sterling record of debate success.
Our very own Matthew Yu will be competing on this year’s Canada’s Smartest Person Junior, a televised competition where he will face off against 11 of the smartest youngsters from across the country! He follows in the footsteps of FDT Founder and CEO Frankie Cena who competed on the show in 2016. He is the youngest competitor on the show and the only one from Vancouver. Nevertheless we are sure he will make a big splash on the show.
The show will premiere on November 14th on CBC!
FDT has had over a dozen students on the Canadian National Debating Team so far in our history but this week we reached another milestone: our first student to make the US National Debating Team.
FDT's own Victor Tong has been selected to join the development team, and Victor will in the future, have a chance to make the full team and represent the USA at competitions around the world. Victor was selected among just 11 other students, which is impressive considering how many excellent debaters compete in the US.
We wish Victor the best of luck on Team USA!
This week we interviewed Ashley Phord-Toy. Ashley has had a checkered record in debate; she has won countless tournaments and represented Canada at international competitions several times in places like Australia, South Africa, and Croatia.
But what made her choose Stanford University in California over the ivy-covered campuses of the East Coast? And what is behind her now 5-year long passion for debate? Visit our website to find out more!
The 3rd Global Round of the World Scholar's Cup has just finished up in Melbourne, Australia and what a competition it was! FDT sent two junior teams to the competition and, with the assistance of Tonya Cena and Jacqueline Belzberg, they battled it out against over 1,000 of the world's top young minds across four exciting competitive events.
We are happy to announce that both teams: Vanessa Zhang, Aurora Zhang, and Katherine Feng, as well as Fiona Li, Vicky Zhang, and Jolin Yu, have qualified to the Tournament of Champions at Yale University along with the two other FDT teams who qualified after the global round in Barcelona.
All of our students have worked very hard to get this far and we hope they give their brains a break before returning to school, and FDT, in just a couple of weeks!
Jason Guo and Leo Wang have placed as the top team overall in the UBC Summer Debate Championship! Moreover FDT's own Alison Lee was a finalist and two of our teams, Allan Lee and Grace Lee, and Anthony Chu and Angela Lu, made it to the semi-finals.
Jason was the top novice speaker as well as the top speaker overall. For the rest of the individual speaker rankings Leo placed 3rd, Allan placed 4th, Grace placed 8th, and Alison placed 9th,
We are so happy for all of our students to have performed so exceptionally. This is the last tournament of the summer before FDT begins our Fall term!
This week we interviewed Anokh and Amolak Singh Dhillon. These brothers are two of Frankie's oldest students and after a successful high school career in debate they both went to the University of British Columbia in Arts. Just this year Amolak learned he had been accepted to the UBC School of Medicine. He will join his brother Anokh there in the fall as they both pursue an MD.
It’s a little unusual. Most debaters are always told they would make great lawyers or politicians. But the brothers found that the skills they learned in debate would transfer to the world of medicine in many interesting ways. Read our interview to find out more!
This year at FDT we have so many exciting success and our students have reached the highest levels of success imaginable. As happy as we are about our successes the end of the year is bittersweet as we have to say goodbye to some of our oldest students and instructors as they move on.
In the next few weeks we want to highlight some of these students and reflect on how debate has helped them chart a path to their future. This week we asked our very former student and instructor Andrew Yun, who just placed as the 5th best debater in the world in Croatia, about his high school debate career and all the doors debate has helped open for him.
After a smashing success in the local round of Scholar's Cup. FDT brought 2 teams to the global round in Barcelona, Spain, facing off against over 1000 of the worlds brightest and best students. Our junior team and senior team competed in 4 categories including writing, debate, Scholar's bowl. and Scholar's challenge. We are so pleased to announce that both teams performed excellently and were chosen to compete in the Tournament of Champions at Yale University.
Congratulations to our teams as well as Cathy Cena for chaperoning and Anna Saint for all her hard work coaching!
The 5th annual edition of the Prague Spring Debate Championship was the most intense and competitive yet with 64 of the world's best teams, many of whom are going on to compete at the Worlds Schools Debate Championships in Croatia in the next few days. We are pleased to announce that against this fierce competition, after 6 rounds, BOTH of FDT's teams broke to the elimination rounds! Congratulations to FDT Blue (Angela Lu, Anthony Chu, Nikki Wu, Lilya Shen, Calvin Zhang) for making it to the Partial Double Octo-Final round.
Moreover, FDT Red blasted through all the elimination rounds and made it to the final round against Team China. They lost on a 4-1 split but still, we are so proud of this fantastic accomplishment. Congratulations to Jacqueline Belzberg, Allan Lee, Alison Lee, Jason Guo, and Grace Lee for their hard work and success!
A week ago FDT hosted our very first annual end of the year Gala. It was a wonderful evening full of games, moving speeches, and of course delicious food.
Seeing all of the generations of successful students present at the Gala truly demonstrated the longevity of FDT's goal and the strength of our mission.
We hope everybody enjoyed this fun-filled evening to cap off this year and from all of us at FDT, we look forward to another year full of success!
At our Gala, we announced our students of the year. The FDT staff spent hours looking at students in 3 categories: Novice, Junior, and Senior, to choose one student in each who best exemplified the virtues of success and hard work. The task was daunting, to say the least, but we are so happy to announce the winners of this award.
Our Novice Student of the Year is Cynthia Wang.
Our Junior Student of the Year is Eric Li.
And finally, our Senior Student of the Year is Allan Lee!
The Junior High Public Speaking National Championship took place over 4 days this past weekend at West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver. Our very own Vivian Gu placed as 2nd best speaker overall, which is all time record for FDT students at this competition. In addition, Katherine Feng placed in 7th overall and May Fan placed 13th overall.
The competition is comprised of 4 individual events and several of our students broke to the final rounds in these events. In particular, Vivian was crowned the debate champion and Katherine was named the impromptu speech champion. Moreover, Vivian placed 2nd in the persuasive category and May placed 3rd in the interpretative reading category.
Congratulations to our students for their hard work and effort in preparing for this tournament. Good job guys!
After an exciting all-FDT final, Ray Zhao and Davis Clark were named the Elementary Champions. Congratulations you two, and also to Cynthia Wang and Aurora Zhang for debating excellently and placing as the 2nd best team overall.
What a fantastic Saturday and such great work from some of our youngest students. Congrats!
Our very own Chelsea Hu was named the Top Overall Speaker at the RE Mountain Novice and Elementary tournament last night in Langley. That is not all for FDT, as we had a great showing at this tournament.
We would like to congratulate Maxwell Holmes on being the 3rd Place Speaker, Jena Yue on placing 9th, and Matthew Yu for placing as 3rd best Novice Speaker. In addition, congratulations to Maxwell and Chelsea for coming in 5th as a team, Ryan Wei for placing as 4th Place Team, and especially Vanessa Zhang and Cynthia Wang for placing as 3rd Place Team.
Way to go guys!
We are so pleased to announce that one of our bright young students, Richard Chen, had yet again done amazingly, placing 2nd at the District level of the Optimist International Oratorical Contest. The District level competition happened in Vancouver, Washington and featured the top speakers from British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.
In winning 2nd place, Richard has won a $1500 scholarship. Congratulations Richard; We are very optimistic about your future in public speaking!
We would like to congratulate May Fan for winning the Steps Together Public Speaking Competition! The competition happened this weekend in Coquitlam, and was put on by the Youth Leadership Society of BC. Also congratulations to Grace Lee who came in 3rd in the junior category.
Good job you two!
Allan Lee has been debating since he was in Grade 8 and has been coached by Frankie Cena since then as well. Last December he beat out the best debaters from across BC for the chance to attend the National Tryout for Team Canada in Newfoundland in April. He did fantastically at the tryouts a few weeks and was selected along with 8 other students to join the Canadian National Debating Team.
Congratulations Allan! Your hard work has paid off.
This weekend in Calgary, Crofton House students Vivian Gu and Lauren Meikle competed against the top teams from across Canada, debating about politics, economics, and culture. After 6 intense rounds, they broke in 5th place to the Quarter Final round!
Lauren and Vivian were the top-ranked team from BC and Vivian placed as the 9th best Junior speaker in Canada and the Top Junior Speaker from BC.
Congrats you two! Your hard work has clearly paid off.
Grace Lee won 1st place in the Grade 8-10 category at the BC "Chinese Bridge" Mandarin Speech Contest. The competition took place in Coquitlam on Sunday and was organized by the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China. Grace won against speakers from all over the province!
Congratulations Grace on this amazing victory.
After placing 2nd in the Coquitlam Round of the Optimist Oratorical Competition last Monday, Richard Chen, won the Zone Round of the competition just this Saturday. The competition brought 8 of the best public speakers in the Lower Mainland together for one competition. Richard's stirring speech won 1st place and now he has qualified to compete in the District Round in Vancouver, Washington on May 12 where he will compete with speakers from BC, Washington, and Oregon. Good luck Richard!
Just this weekend Eric Li and Victor Tong travelled to the United Kingdom where they competed at the International Competition for Young Debaters at Oxford University. The competition features over 100 teams with the best Under-15 debaters from places like Hong Kong, Ireland, and India. Eric and Victor qualified for the tournament after placing high at the Queens University Debate Championship in January. Their rounds went fantastically and in their last round of the day, they came within inches of breaking to the final! Still, we are so proud of their hard work and talent. Good job guys!
Last weekend, FDT took 20 students to the World Scholars Cup round in Vancouver at Mulgrave School. The World Scholars Cup is a global competition where top students compete to demonstrate their knowledge of history, literature, and science across 4 events. It's a high-level and challenging competition that our students have been studying for months for.
There were too many standout results to mention all of them, so here is just a snapshot of our students' successes.