The Brown County Junior High School We the People team overcame multiple challenges to earn the right to compete at state again this year.
BCJHS placed third in the central region on Nov. 13, which took place entirely virtually. The students were not together when they competed, after COVID-19 shifted the entire school to “red” status on the night of Nov. 11.
Teacher Michael Potts and the students all watched the award show separately the night of the contest via Zoom.
“I never go into an award ceremony thinking we’ve got it covered, but I really thought they did a great job today, and they put us in a really good position to be in the Top 3,” he said that evening.
Fishers Junior High School placed first in the central division, St. Richard’s Episcopal School placed second and BCJHS placed third.
Unit 4 of the BCJHS team — Averi Vaught, Sophie Mathis and Adah Gredy — was the highest-scoring group from BCJHS and received a school unit award.
The We the People program teaches students about civic competence and responsibilities. The course emphasizes American history and constitutional issues, including current events and applicable court cases. Then, at We the People competitions, students testify in mock congressional hearings before panels of professional judges.
In the past 11 years, Brown County Junior High School has won six We the People state championships, two national runner-up titles and two national championships.
The state competition will take place virtually Dec. 9 and 10.
Potts said this year’s team has shown “so much promise.”
“They’ve kept me on my toes more than teams have in the past. They are always raring to get things done and go. I really appreciate that,” Potts said.
“I just only wish it was a normal year. With that type of curiosity and drive, a normal year would be so much better.”
Potts said this year’s team stepped up at the competition. No previous We the People team has had to compete virtually, and some students as well as Potts had been out for quarantines at various times before the contest.
“I felt like we were behind. I always do. When you couple the two, I just didn’t know what to expect. They certainly exceeded my expectations. They did amazingly well,” he said.
Like years before, Potts said there is room for the team to grow and improve before the state competition.
“This is usually the time when they have that wake-up call and kind of realize what the competition is about, then moving forward every year, we seem to get that motivation going, so I think it will be the same this year,” he said.
Team member Madilyn Hawley said she decided to take the We the People class because she wanted to improve her public speaking skills and learn more about government. Before she gave her opening statement, she was pacing around her room.
“Once I said my opening statement, though, I felt so much more comfortable and confident in myself,” she said.
Hawley said she also enjoyed answering six minutes of follow-up questions from judges. Because she wasn’t reading off a paper, she said she stuttered less. “I was just using the knowledge I was taught by my teacher. … Mr. Potts is a great teacher for this class. He has a great sense of humor,” Hawley said.
“This class has been so helpful for my life,” she added, “and I know so much more about how our country works and I love this class.”
Kai Koester said the regional competition was both fun and “very stressful.”
“It was fun because it showed how much knowledge I gained about the government and how we use it today,” he said.
“It was also very stressful because it was a competition, and competitions are very stressful for me because I want to win and proceed to the next level.”
Potts tells his teams each year that they are as strong as their weakest link, so Koester said he wanted to do his best to not let his team down.
“Overall, doing We The People has not only taught me about government, but it has also given me another thing to think about every day,” Koester said. He said Potts was his favorite teacher.
Hawley said she would recommend the class to future eighth-graders and fifth-graders.
Potts is also teaching a fifth-grade We the People class at Brown County Intermediate School this school year. That team will compete in a state showcase next May. “That is going great. The kids are so energetic,” Potts said.
“It’s a different world with fifth-graders. The connections these kids make, they are so excited about it. To hear little fifth-graders talking about social contract theory and all of these high-minded concepts is really cool.”
The hope is that Potts teaching the fifth-graders will help build a foundation for when those students take the class in eighth grade.
Because the junior high is closed to in-person instruction until at least Nov. 29, Potts said the challenge now will be preparing virtually when the team has been meeting in person since the beginning of school. He said he will miss the energy that in-person meetings bring.
“It’s not the same when I’m on a screen and they are all on a screen. I can see them and they can see me, which is fine, but they are all muted. I get none of that interaction. I get no spontaneity through a Zoom call that I would in the classroom,” he said.
Even though meeting virtually is not ideal, Potts said there still can be some advantages to it, like getting more judges to volunteer and practice quizzing the students on Zoom.
“I am trying to look at the positives. Certainly there are some negatives, but I think in the long run, there are some positives and it will work out fine,” he said.
Since the team had been meeting in person, they had not practiced much virtually until the day of the regional competition.
“That was kind of nervewracking in a sense that we’ve not really practiced, and then here we are at competition and we had to navigate this new platform,” Potts said.
“But they did an amazing job.”
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