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2009 News Articles › Northwest Guilford Moves On To Nationals
Northwest Guilford Moves On To Nationals
Article Date: Friday, March 06, 2009
Written By: Russell Rawlings
On April 24, students from Northwest Guilford High School in Greensboro will travel to Washington, D.C., to represent North Carolina in the 2009 We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution national finals.
About 1,200 high school students from all fifty states and the Northern Mariana Islands participate in this academic competition on the U.S. Constitution.
We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution is funded by the U.S. Department of Education under the Education for Democracy Act approved by the United States Congress. The program is directed by the Center for Civic Education and administered in North Carolina by the Law-Related Education Department of the North Carolina Bar Association Foundation.
Diane Wright serves as director of the LRE Department, which hosted the state competition in Cary on March 6. Francis Bryant coordinates the program for U.S. Rep. Howard Cobles District 6 which includes Guilford County.
Northwest Guilford prevailed over Camp Lejeune High School, Carolina International School of Harrisburg and Raleigh Charter School. Showcasing schools which also presented at the state competition were Forest Hills High School of Marshville, West Craven High School and the Youth Leadership After School Program of Havelock. Northwest Guilford and Raleigh Charter also provided showcasing teams.
Northwest Guilford students, under the direction of teacher Ray Parrish, has studied for months to prepare for their role as experts testifying on constitutional issues in a simulated congressional hearing. To represent their state at the national finals, the class won their congressional district and state competitions earlier this school year.
We win with ideas, we just try to have real interesting ideas, said Parrish who teaches the Honors Current Events Government class. The class motto for the class is The Pursuit of Truth in the Company of Friends. This is the teams 13th state championship.
The first round of the national finals will be held at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, Arlington, Va., April 25-26. Now in its 22nd year, the competition involves entire classes making presentations and answering questions on constitutional topics before a panel of judges recruited from across the country.
Constitutional scholars, lawyers, and public officials, acting as congressional committee members, will judge the students' performances. The combined scores of the classes during the first two days of hearings will determine the top 10 classes to compete in the championship round Monday, April 27, in congressional hearing rooms on Capitol Hill.
The annual three-day final competition is the culminating activity of We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, the most extensive civic education program of its kind in the country. The Northwest Guilford High School students have been studying We the People: The Citizen & the Constitution, developed by the Center for Civic Education. We the People provides students with an understanding of the fundamental values and principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Students representing Northwest Guilford High School are Phil Adkins, Jimmy Clark, Myranda Conway, William Crabtree, Seth Crawford, Raj De, Victoria Dounoucos, Natasha Fischer, Emily Ford, Joel Hage, P.J. Harvey, Megan Hitchcock, Parker Jackson, Eric James, Kevin Kane, Nicole Langkamp, Sam McCall, Ben Miller, David Miller, Jennifer Pan, Nathan Perdue, William Price, Natalie Prince, Katie Riley, Peyton Riley, Emily Ross, Kim Seufer, Ethan Siler, Jacob Sipe, Austin Smith, Myanh Ta, Emily Tinsley, Lory Willard and Matt Younts.
Nationwide, the program is implemented at the upper elementary, middle, and high school levels and has reached more than 30 million students and 81,000 teachers since its inception in 1987.
A recent independent study examined the effects of the We the People program on civic knowledge, skills, and attitudes, evaluating We the People participants and a matched comparison group of high school government students. We the People students scored 30 percent higher than their peers on a comprehensive test that measured understanding of core values and principles of democracy, constitutional limits on governmental institutions, and rights and responsibilities of citizenship.