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Date: 2/10/2021
EASTHAMPTON – On Jan. 30, Easthampton High School’s “We The People” team won the State Championship hosted by the Center of Civic Education for the fourth year in a row, making this their fifth state championship overall.
Last year’s team also won the national competition in April 2020.
“What makes me so proud is their willingness to take these incredible risks and to put so much energy, time, and commitment into something with zero guarantees of return. To see and hear them talk about how much the program means to them, without ever really talking about the winning part is what tells me this program is important,” said Kelley Brown the teacher and coach.
She added that winning is the icing on the cake.
Shane Cudworth, a junior, and Gwyneth Hiller, a senior at Easthampton High School (EHS), both shared that they were relieved to have won because if they had lost, their time with We The People would be done and neither of them were ready to be done with the course yet.
Cudworth recalled that when he heard the announcer say the “e” in Easthampton, he was already throwing his hands in the air, and later on a classmate told him that they knew they had won by Cudworth’s reaction.
The We The People course is a constitutional hearing course where students engage in authentic conversation with adults they do not know about modern constitutional issues. The class has constitutional hearings with outside judges who give the class an unbiased assessment.
Brown said the competition involves a series of hearings that are modeled after a congressional hearing and the students become experts on certain topics and they prepare a four-minute statement in response to questions that they receive ahead of time.
During the competition they read their prepared statement, then the judges consisting of lawyers, national judges, and professors ask the students six minutes of unknown questions and the teams have to answer them on the spot and back up their answers with evidence.
“Normally, you would do that right next to your partner and you would be able to hit them on the knee underneath the table, be able to read each other’s faces, and all of those things. Those are really missing in a Zoom atmosphere,” Brown said.
The championship ran from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. and Brown said it ran shorter on Zoom than in person because students only had to answer one question. Normally, they answer two which meant they would have a morning round and an afternoon round.
Brown explained that in previous years, the team would be in one room and each unit would represent themselves while the rest watched. They never see any other school present. To keep the Zoom bandwidth down, they only had the actual unit that was presenting on Zoom. So students only saw their hearing.
The units that they covered were: what are the philosophical and historical foundations of the American political system; how did the framers create the Constitution; how has the Constitution been changed to further the ideals contained in the Declaration of Independence; how have the values and principles embodied in the Constitution shaped American institutions and practices; and what rights does the Bill of Rights protect; what challenges might face American constitutional democracy in the 21st century?
Brown shared that they have 12 students in the class this year, which makes more work for some students because they have to prepare for six units and need at least three students per team. This meant that six students had to do double the work for the state championship.
To prepare for their units students meet with each other as well as receive support from Brown, We The People alum, and doing independent studying.
If working with a smaller number of students is not challenging enough, the high school is currently in the remote learning model which means the students have to prepare over Zoom. Brown shared that it was hard to build community within the class on Zoom.
Cudworth said that at the beginning of the year the class went through basic information and key necessary ideas, went through basic ideas and principals, had practice hearings as tests every week, and then eventually got their groups and the preparation for the championship started.
He shared that he and his team would meet every weekend and sometimes he found himself meeting with two groups which was exhausting.
Hiller echoed her classmate’s statement and shared that Zoom fatigue made preparation even harder.
“Which is why I was so happy when we won, it was difficult but I really enjoyed it and while there was a ton of meetings outside of class, it was a really fun experience and a lot of it was trying to work around the inevitable internet issues and having to zoom all the time and trying to figure out the best way we could acclimate to what We The People would have been like before Zoom,” Hiller shared.
While Cudworth expressed remote learning has been exhausting, he pointed out that We The People was the only class that a good amount of students had their cameras on and actively participating. He said a majority of his classes are black boxes and teachers asking questions and then there is silence for a long time. He enjoyed coming into the class because it feels like a different experience than any other class.
“It says something that this is one of the only classes where I see people keep their cameras on,” he shared.
“Ms. Brown definitely helped with that. I cannot imagine it is easy to motivate a bunch of kids who are stuck at home to be active and energetic, happy during a tough time like this but she came up with creative ways like themes for days. Like coming to this day wearing pink,” he added.
Hiller said a big part of why she joined We The People is because of Brown. She recalled that it was her second week at EHS, she just moved to Massachusetts from Arkansas her junior year and Brown told her to join. Hiller shared that she had the option of transferring to Hampshire Regional High School (HRHS) with her brother but she chose to stay because of Brown’s class.
Besides Brown recruiting her, Hiller saw the admiration people had for the class and how people were obsessed with it. She remembered a time when she was in homeroom and a group of students was trying to recruit her.
“I love the topic, I love the content so of course I would be interested anyway but there is this kind of like strange enigmatic quality to it that draws you in, even if you are not interested in the content, you just want to be a part of it,” Hiller said.
Cudworth shared that he was taking AP U.S. History his sophomore year with Brown and she recruited him then. He also had a group of friends who were seniors and they would tell him that he had to join.
“She builds a community in the class so every kid you see walk out the classroom is happy and enjoying themselves,” he shared.
A student can only take the course once so next year he plans on retaking it as an independent study to recruit other students and mentor the next team. He also shared that after he graduates he would like to come back and be a judge. Since Hiller is a senior and will be going off to college she would love to judge hearings and help out where and when she can.
Brown said the coolest thing about the program is that alumni come back. She shared that she has students who graduated six or seven years ago who come back to join and help her current team.
“It is definitely the most important thing and I do a lot of things and this right here is so meaningful and I think the fact that students are able to come back and sort of seamlessly blend in shows that it is something that students actually retain and take with them,” Brown said.
There are no requirements for students to join We The People because Brown wanted to make it open for everyone.
“One of the things that I think is really important is making a class accessible to any student who wants to walk through the door and be a part of it. One thing I know from teaching students that take many different courses is that everybody has different strengths and it made no sense to me to limit that. If a student wants to learn and demystify the government, be a part of the community, learn to be a good community member and citizen, it should be open to every student,” Brown said.
The new unit topics and questions for the national championship were released and the team is already preparing themselves. The competition will run from April 24 to 26. All of the teams will compete on the first two days and on the last day the top 12 teams will compete.
As for preparations, there will be a difference in how they prepare for the amount of content because they will have to answer two questions per unit. Hiller shared that she is in two units and will have to prepare for four questions.
Cudworth did point out that they have more time to prepare for nationals compared to the amount of time they had for states.
“Last semester when we were preparing for states, we had to go through a class curriculum and then prepare for states and we really only had a month to prepare our individual statements and questioning. Now we have like three months until April to prepare for these national questions, like Gwen said we have more content but I feel like we have more space to dive in deep into the topics,” he said.
Cudworth added that now that they have experience with answering questions, what it is like at a hearing, and got down their dynamic of who is doing what, they are more focused on the information more than the feeling of answering them.
Since the pandemic has put a pause on big celebrations Brown said her real hope is that this summer or very late spring they can have an outdoor celebration for this year’s team and last year’s team who never got a celebration for being number one in the country.
Brown said these accomplishments are not to be understated.
Hiller shared that she celebrated by taking a nap afterward and then studied right away, writing out her unit topics and questions.
“It feels like the first step rather than we completed states that is its own staircase, it feels like the first step to a great staircase,” Hiller said.
Cudworth said it feels like he is starting the class over again as if it is the first day and got a lot of motivation for nationals. While he shared that he did not start to study right away, he did make an important phone call.
“Immediately after we ended the Zoom call that we had after we figured out we won, I called my grandmother who calls me every Friday and is constantly asking me about We The People so I immediately told her and we talked for about 20 minutes,” Cudworth shared.