The Connection

They did it! In February, The Connection reported that the students of Cynthia Burgett’s special Civics class at Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon had won the State Championship of the “We The People Competition” and were determined to bring home the gold at the National Invitationals. On April 20, at the Marriott Fair Lakes, they did just that, being crowned the national champions at the third annual Middle School Division event. The qualifying rounds of the nationals took place at George Mason University, where the Rachel Carson kids were up against eight other teams from around the country, including the junior high group from Indiana who had taken the top honors for the last two years. “We were so excited when we heard that we were going on to compete for first place,” admitted team member Maggie Sparling. “Yes,” agreed classmate Debbie Dong. “That meant no matter what, we wouldn’t place less than third overall. We wanted to do our school and teacher proud!”

THE COMPETITION, part of the outreach efforts of the California-based nonprofit Center for Civic Education, requires serious commitment from the students and their teacher. The team was formed back in October of last year. To get to the final round of competition, the youngsters had to survive numerous practice rounds, the regionals in Purcellville and the state championship in Williamsburg, where they finally earned the right to represent their school and the Commonwealth.

Formatted to simulate congressional hearings, the competition divides the students into six groups based on the six units of the textbook “We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution” where they act as constitutional experts “testifying” before a panel. In this case, the panel, rather than comprising senators or congressmen, is made up of recognized experts in the field of constitutional law, government, foreign affairs and related areas. “It was pretty intense,” acknowledged Maggie Sparling, whose team was tasked with the unit covering the Bill of Rights and the concept of Due Process. “The judges were attorneys, professors, people like that from all around the country. You really had to know what you were talking about.”

Each “hearing” opens with a Unit giving a four-minute speech about their subject. The judges then have six minutes to ask follow-up questions, or probe for knowledge by asking new questions within the field of study. “I think there were a few surprises,” said Varshini Babu, who was part of the Unit 3 team, “but we had a good strategy. Each person on the team had a strength and a depth of knowledge on a certain piece of the unit and we knew how to get the right person to answer each question.”

Developing those strategies for studying, preparation of speeches and for communicating the team’s comprehensive understanding of each topic and ability to apply their knowledge to current day affairs was as important as learning the actual textbook material, according to the youngsters who represented their winning team members during an interview.

For example, Unit 2 expert Amrit Gorle noted that the judges seemed to like a bit of disagreement among the team members. “If you politely showed different opinions that were based on knowledge, and then came to agreement for your answers, it showed them that you all knew the information and really thought about it.”

“That was a good thing,” declared Debbie Dong from Unit 6. “We had some battles in our group.” “Don’t forget the tie back,” said Ria Singh.

“We found it was really important to bring our answers back to the original question, or the basis of our unit. I think it showed that we could keep it all together and stay focused,” Singh said.

While some of their strategies were applied universally across all six units, the students were also able to adapt strategies unique to their individual units to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members.

THE TROPHY and the recognition make all of the hard work worthwhile, but other lessons and benefits garnered seemed to be of equal import to the winners. The opportunity to make new friends (“Real ones, that you can have real conversations with,” as defined by Maggie Sparling) came in high on the list of the good things to take away from the experience. “Learning to collaborate,” was a benefit to Amrit Gorle, and “learning and practicing effective communication, being clear, concise and pertinent,” was a valuable lesson for Varshini Babu.

“This was a real life experience,” said Unit 4 member Sophie Halkett, “where you were tested and had to think on your feet. It was hard work and sometimes scary, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

The Winners

Unit 1

Varun Gannavarapu

Ria Singh

Angie Sohn

Ananya Vavilala

Unit 2

Amrit Gorle

Shivam Gandhi

Ethan Nguonly

Bindu Srinivasa

Serena Xia

Unit 3

Varshini Babu

Shruti Chennamaraja

Ryan Kim

Sitara Uppalapati

Unit 4

Sophie Halkett

Esha Saini

Rachit Sinha

Noah Yeh

Unit 5

Cameron Khan

Vikrant Mahajan

Alexa Schwartzman

Margaret Sparling

Meenoti Thakore

Unit 6

Debbie Dong

Noah Grausz

Eli Kaufman

Joyce Liu