FDT has just finished up the 2nd Global Round of the World Scholar's up in Sydney, Australia this past week and our Junior Team of Fiona Li, Jerry Song, and Jason Song performed excellently. The World Scholar's Cup is a challenging and rigorous competition consisting of 4 events in total: Team Debate, Team Writing, Team Bowl, and Team Challenge. The students’ knowledge is tested in 6 pre-chosen subject areas from science to social studies. In Sydney, Jerry, Jason, and Fiona went up against hundreds of the top young students from across the world, which makes their success even more impressive. As a team, Jerry, Jason, and Fiona won a Silver Medal in the Team Bowl event as well as a Silver Medal in Team Writing. Finally, they won a Gold Medal in Team Debate, finishing 66th overall, and as a team they have qualified for the Tournament of Champions at Yale University later this year.

Individually our students excelled as well.  We want to congratulate Fiona for winning a Silver Medal in Debate and Jerry and Jason for winning Gold Medals each in Debate as well. Both Jason and Fiona also won Gold Medals in Individual Writing and in the Scholars Challenge each student was recognized for their mastery of one of the 6 subject areas that Scholar's Cup involves. Fiona won 2 Silver Medals for Literature and Art. Jerry won a Gold Medal for Art. And Jason won 3 Silver Medals and a Gold Medal for art. Congratulations to all of our exceptional students!

Last week FDT brought a team to the Global Round of the World Scholar's Cup in The Hague in The Netherlands after this team qualified past the Vancouver Round last April. We are so happy with their results!

We want to congratulate the team of Grace Wu, Amy Diao, and Jacky Xue, who won a Gold Medal in Scholars Bowl, a Silver Medal in Team Debate, and were the 6th place team from their region! Moreover this team qualified for the Tournament of Champions later this year at Yale University.

Individually all of our young scholars performed excellently. Grace won a Gold Medal in Debate and Collaborative Writing. Jacky won 6 Gold Medals himself, 4 of which recognizing his achievement in the subject areas of Art, Social Studies, History, and Science. Moreover, Amy won 2 Gold Medals and 2 Silver Medals.

We are proud of how much these young students have achieved and we look forward to the next World Scholars Cup!

We are so pleased to announce that after a highly competitive tournament featuring some of the world's best teams in Bangkok, Thailand, FDT Red (Anthony Chu, Jason Guo, Peter Zhang, Jamin Feng, Angela Lu) made it to the Semi-final round before losing to Team China, and finished 3rd overall! Moreover we want to congratulate FDT Blue (Eric Li, Jonathan Chu, Nikki Wu, Katherine Feng, Angie Lei) for breaking to the Partial Double-Octofinals.

Finally we would like to congratulate the Danish National Debate Team coached by Frankie Cena, Dena Tabyanian, and Arsalan Ghaemi. Team WSDC Denmark broke to Octo-Finals and Denmark Junior Red broke to the Novice Final and won, becoming the Champion Novice team.

Congrats to all the teams and we wish the best to Team Denmark at the Worlds Schools Debate Championships in Bangkok this week!

In June, FDT held its 2nd ever annual gala at the Pinnacle Hotel. Attendees enjoyed a night of games, celebrations, and even a musical performance from our own Founder and CEO Frankie Cena. Most importantly we were able to look back at the year and recognize the excellence of our students and staff. Here are highlights from the evening!

For the first time ever FDT gave out awards to instructors. The award for New Instructor of the Year went to Panthea Pourmalek. And the award for Instructor of the Year went to Anna Saint, with runner up Jacqueline Belzberg.

FDT then recognized the outstanding students who had qualified to national events. For qualifying to Junior Speech Nationals we recognized Katherine Feng, Eric Li, Nora Zhu, Jena Yue, Natalie Viegas, and Hailey Chen. For qualifying to Junior Debate Nationals we recognized Eric Li, Jonathan Chu, Jessie Liu, Alex Logan, Natalie Viegas, and Sean Oh. We recognized Angelina Zhang, Nicholas Viegas, Joyce Chen, and Anthony Chu for qualifying to Senior Speech Nationals and Bianca Dammholz, Maggie MacInnis, Kiran Basra, Angelina Zhang, and Emily Ni for qualifying to BP Nationals. For qualifying to Senior Debate Nationals we recognized Bianca Dammholz, Saara Meghji, Leo Wang, Judy Rhee, Allan Lee, and Jamin Feng while recognizing Emily Ni, Nikki Wu, Vivian Gu, Angelina Zhang, and Kiran Basra for competing at French Debate Nationals. Finally, we recognized Jason Guo and Jamin Feng for qualifying to try out for the Canadian National Debating Team at National Qualifiers and Angelina Zhang and Nicholas Viegas who represented Canada at the Worlds Individual Public Speaking and Debate Championships.

For the first time FDT awarded special honours for students who pushed the bar of excellence for a variety of reasons. First we named the students who made an impact with FDT despite being new to our academy. Our Best New Novice Student was Amy Ren. Our Best New Junior Student was Edward Gao. Finally our Best New Senior Student was Emily Ni.

Next we named our students who have through hard work, showed remarkable improvement throughout the year. Our Most Improved Novice Student was Ivy Ye. Our Most Improved Junior Student was Emily Qiu. And our Most Improved Senior Student was Grace Lee.

After we announced students who have set a bright example for others with their leadership, work ethic, and story. Our Most Inspiration Novice Students were Cynthia and Athena Yu. Our Most Inspirational Junior Student was Alice Xu. And our Most Inspirational Senior Student was Angela Lu!

Finally we were pleased to announce which students had won FDT’s highest honour: Student of the Year. Our Novice Student of the Year for 2018/2019 is Matthew Yu. Our Junior Student of the Year is Eric Li. And finally, our Senior Student of the Year is Jason Guo!

This year has been FDT's best so far and we look forward to a bright future in 2019/2020!

Last week FDT took 16 students to the US National Speech and Debate Championships in Dallas, Texas. It was FDT's first time ever at the competition, which is one of the largest academic competitions in the world with over 5,000 attendees.  

We are so happy to announce that the team of Eric Li, Aurora Zhang, Alice Xu, and Jonathan Chu, made it to the final round of the Middle School World Schools Competition against China, and emerged victorious on a 4-1 split winning the national title!

Moreover, we want to congratulate Canada Blue (Koby Chen, Jena Yue, Athens Wu, and Nora Zhu) who broke to the the Triple Octo-finals and eventually made it to the Double Octo-finals, placing in the top 32 teams among the 193 teams competing. Even more impressive is that Jena Yue placed as the 7th best speaker overall among the near 800 speakers that were competing, with Athens Wu and Koby Chen also placing in the top 100 speakers.

Congratulations to all our students for their hard work!

This weekend several FDT students and instructors traveled to Montreal for the Junior National Debate Championships and French National Debate Championships!

We are so proud of their success at this prestigious, national-level competition! At French Nationals, FDT students Emily Ni and Nikki Wu broke to the Semi-Final round and as speakers, Emily Ni placed 8th overall while FDT instructor Angelina Zhang placed 7th.

At Junior Nationals, Alex Logan and Jessie Liu from FDT broke to the Quarter-Final round, while another team from York House School coached by FDT instructor Corina Picui, also broke to the Quarter-Finals. Moreover, Eric Li placed as the 8th best speaker overall in the country, Sean Oh placed 9th, and Alex Logan placed 10th.

We are so proud of the success of our debaters doing so well, going against the best debaters from across Canada!

Over the weekend several FDT students participated at the Steps Together Public Speaking Competition and we are so proud to announce that FDT won all the top awards. In the Junior category Vivian Liang came in 1st place while Angelina Yueng came in 2nd place. In the Senior category May Fan came in 1st place while Nathan Senyard placed 2nd. Moreover, Vivian Liang was named the overall winner of the competition, taking home a cash prize. We are so proud of our student's successes and hard work!

 This weekend, Mulgrave School hosted the Vancouver Regional Round of the World Scholar's Cup, a global competition in which thousands of the world's top high school and middle school students compete. The World Scholar's Cup is a challenging and rigorous competition consisting of 4 events in total: Team Debate, Team Writing, Team Bowl, and Team Challenge. The students’ knowledge is tested in 6 pre-chosen subject areas from science to social studies. With that level of challenge, the accomplishments of our students are even more impressive!

We want to congratulate each of our teams for their success. First, Fiona Li, Jason Song, and Jerry Song who won a Gold Medal in Team Debate and Team Bowl, and a Silver Medal in Team Challenge and Team Writing, winning a Gold Medal overall. Next, the teams of Derrick Liu, Jerry Li, Vincent Guo and Cynthia Yu, Athena Yu, Richard Ma each won a Silver Medal overall. The team of Grace Wu, Amy Diao, and Jacky Xue won a Silver Medal in Team Bowl and a Silver Medal overall. Congratulations are due to Rohan Singh, Paul Dhaliwal, and Ezra Lee who won a Silver Medal in Team Challenge and Jonathan Nie, Jason Chen, and Adrian Zheng who won a Silver Medal in Team Bowl and in Team Debate. Finally, we want to congratulate Anisha Singh and Diya Perry who won a Gold Medal in Team Debate and a Silver Medal overall.

In total over 20 FDT students have qualified for the Global Round of the World Scholar's Cup which will be held around the world in Australia, China, and the Netherlands this summer. We wish those that attend the best of luck!

This weekend FDT sent a team of some of our best and brightest young debaters to the Bluebonnet World School's Debate Tournament near Houston, Texas. We are so happy to announce that our team not only made it to the Quarter-Final round, but they were named the 5th place team overall. Congratulations are in order to Eric Li, Athens Wu, Jena Yue, Sarah Sheng as well as Max Rosen, a student from the Canadian national debating team, who competed with FDT at the tournament.

We are also happy to announce that FDT student Victor Tong came in 3rd place overall as a speaker, Sarah Sheng placed 5th, and Eric Li placed as the 6th best speaker overall.

Congratulations y'all! 

We have some exciting news from the Worlds Individuals Public Speaking and Debate Championships in Toronto this past weekend! Angelina Zhang has placed as the 7th place speaker overall in the entire world and Nicholas Viegas placed 10th overall! Angelina and Nicholas were named in the top 10 of over 100 of the world’s best speakers from 11 countries including the US, Australia, and China among others.

Moreover Angelina made it to the finals for impromptu speaking and debate, while Nicholas made finals for interpretative reading, placing 4th overall in that category.

Congratulations you two!

This weekend hundreds of BC's best debaters competed in the UBC Spring High School Tournament. We are pleased to announce that FDT's own Jason Gu and Anthony Chu are the new Senior Champions! Moreover we want to congratulate Bianca Dammholz and Saara Meghji and Vivian Gu and Ellen Li for making it to the break-rounds. The good news doesn’t end there. Alice Xu and Aurora Zhang were named 3rd place junior team overall with Sarah Sheng and Angela Lu placing 4th overall in the junior category.

As individual speakers many of FDT's brightest students performed exceptionally. In the senior category, FDT's own instructor Saara Meghji was named the top speaker overall, while Vivian Gu came in 4th, Allan Lee came in 5th, Bianca Dammholz came in 7th, Angelina Zhang came in 9th, Ellen Li came in 11th, Jason Guo came in 13th, Anthony Chu came in 14th, and Kiran Basra came in 15th. In the junior category  Sarah Sheng was named the 4th place speaker overall, Eric Li came in 5th, Alex Logan came in 9th,. Othman Mekhloufi came in 10th, Angela Lu came in 12th, Jena Yue came in 13th, Emily Qiu came in 14th, and Athens Wu came in 15th. Moreover, Eric Li was named the top Novice speaker, Emily Qiu was named the 2nd best novice speaker, and Jerry Zhang was named the 3rd place novice speaker.

We congratulate all of our students and instructors for their hard work in preparation for this tournament!

Just this past weekend we took a team of some of FDT’s best debaters along with Canadian National Debating Team member Naomi Panovka, to the annual Prague Spring Debate Championship.

We have some great results to announce. After breaking to the octofinals, FDT advanced to the quarterfinals eventually placing 5th in an incredibly challenging and competitive tournament.

Moreover Grace Lee placed as the 8th best speaker overall and Jason Guo placed 4th. Congratulations guys!

FDT is just finishing up an exciting weekend at one of the world's most competitive debate tournaments, the Harvard World Schools Invitational. We are so proud to announce that FDT Purple finished 4th overall, in a field of 62 of the world's best teams including the national teams of many countries. Congratulations to Alice Xu, Aurora Zhang, Jena Yue, and Athens Wu for their hard work in not only breaking to Octo-Finals, but fighting their way to the Semi-Finals where they lost to the Canadian National Team. What's even more astounding is that these girls are only in Grade 8 and Grade 9!

More than that we want to congratulate Saara Meghji and Angelina Zhang, who were debating for the Canadian National Team and made it to the Octo-Finals, as well as Allan Lee, whose team made it to the Quarter-Finals. Moreover, the Danish National Debate Team coached by Frankie Cena, Dena Tabyanian, and Arsalan Ghaemi, made it to the Quarter Finals! For speaker awards we want to congratulate Allan Lee for placing as the 7th best speaker overall, Saara and Angelina who tied for 8th place speaker overall, and Aurora Zhang who was named the 5th best novice speaker.

We are so proud of students and their hard work and of course their success wouldn't be possible without the hard work of their chaperones and coaches. Well done guys!

FDT ended up sending over 30 of it’s students to the BC Provincial Debate Championships that were held this weekend in Victoria, BC and we have some great results to announce after a very tough and competitive weekend of debate. We want to congratulate Leo Wang and Judy Rhee who were named the 4th place senior team in the province, and Allan Lee and Jamin Feng who came in 6th. In the junior category we want to recognize Lauren Meikle and Emily Ni for their outstanding achievement in being named the Champion junior team. Moreover, congrats to Peter Zhang who was the top junior speaker and Lauren Meikle who came in 5th place. We also want to congratulate David Xia who was named the 3rd place novice speaker and Jerry Zhang, who came in 4th place.  We will also be sending multiple teams to the national debate championships! Eric Li and Jonathan Chu, Alex Logan and Jessie Liu, and Sean Oh, will be going on to the Junior Debate Championships later this year in Quebec. Allan Lee and Jamin Feng, along with Judy Rhee and Leo Wang will be advancing to the Senior National Debate Championships in Halifax later this year. We wish all our teams the best of luck!

This weekend the Bilingual Debate Provincial Championships were held at West Point Grey Academy and we have some amazing results to announce.

Eric Li was named the 2nd place Speaker in the Junior category and came in 5th place as a team. Moreover, Vivian Gu was the Top Speaker in the Senior category, while Angelina Zhang came in 3rd place, and Emily Ni came in 5th place. Emily Ni and Nikki Wu were named the Top Senior Team, while Vivian Gu came in 4th place as a team.

We are so excited for Eric, Nikki, Vivian, and Emily who will go to French Debate Nationals in Halifax this year. We wish them the best of luck!

On Friday night in Langley FDT brought 17 teams to the 2nd Annual R.E. Mountain Novice Invitational. We are so proud to announce that FDT took the top awards in the Grade 4-6 and Grade 7-8 category. Vanessa Zhang and Alice Shen were the top Grade 7-8 team and Aiden Han and Jerry Li were the top Grade 4-6 team. Moreover Cynthia Wang and Edward Gao were the 2nd place team in the 7-8 category. In the 4-6 category Veronica Guo and Vincent Guo came in 2nd place and Cynthia and Athena Yu came in 3rd.

For speaker awards, Edward was the top speaker in Grade 7-8 category while Cynthia came in 2nd. Veronica came in 2nd in the Grade 4-6 category, Aiden came in 3rd, and Athena came in 4th.  

We are so happy about the achievements and hard work of our students and look forward to future successes!

Just yesterday, Judy Rhee and Leo Wang made it to the final round in the senior category at Lower Mainland North Regionals. It was an incredibly tough tournament with some of the best debaters in the province competing. We are so proud of their accomplishments! In the junior category Eric Li and Jonathan Chu came in 2nd place as a team while Peter Zhang and Michael Wu came 3rd, and Sarah Sheng and Angela Lu came 5th. In the novice category David Xia and Richard Chen were the top team overall.

Individually Allan Lee placed as 4th place senior speaker overall, Leo Wang placed 5th, Judy Rhee placed 6th, and Nick Young placed 10th. In the junior category Peter Zhang was the 1st place speaker overall, Michael Wu was 4th place, Koby Chen was 5th, Sarah Sheng was 7th, Anthony Chu was 8th, and Eric Li was 9th. David Xia was the 3rd place novice speaker.

If that wasn't enough in total we have 10 students going on to Provincials. Judy Rhee, Leo Wang, Eric Li, Jonathan Chu, Peter Zhang, Michael Wu, Sarah Sheng, Angela Lu, David Xia, and Richard Chen will be attending the Law Foundation Provincial Tournament in Victoria this March! Moreover, Allan Lee, Jamin Feng, Jason Guo, and Anthony Chu are alternates to go to provincials.

We are so proud of our students and their achievements and we wish them the best of luck at provincials!

Just last week it was announced that FDT Student Angeline Wang has qualified for the National Debating Team of Wales. She along with 4 other high-school students will compete at the Worlds School Debate Championship in Sri Lanka this summer. We wish Angeline and her team the best of luck at World’s!

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!