[ot-caption title=”Pine Crest seniors Tara Schulman, Dani Swords and Evin Rothschild answering follow-up questions from the judges during the We the People Competition.”  (via Samantha Meade, senior)”]

On November 28, 2016, Ms. Everett and the entire AP Government Seminar class held the district We the People competition in the ICI.  Pine Crest is the only team competing in We the People from our district, so the event served as practice for the State competition in Orlando in January, where the class will face off against other teams.  The competition lasted four hours and many AP Government and Politics classes attended the event throughout the day.[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

For We the People, the class was divided into six units and received the questions ahead of time in order to prepare. These questions based largely on core government topics and principles, were meant to be answered as if it were a simulated Congressional hearing. For the last few weeks, the class has focused on getting ready for the event and fine tuning their speeches.  The answers to the questions are presented in front of a panel of three judges who usually come from a field with some connection to government.  The three judges for the district competition were all criminal defense lawyers, but many judges are also local and state judges, and law enforcement officials. Each unit was called up to present the answer to one of their three questions chosen at random, meaning all units had to be ready to answer all three questions.  They then received four minutes to answer the questions from their prepared statements followed by six minutes of unrestricted follow up questions where the judges would ask questions related to the prepared statements. [spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]

[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]Overall, the experience was a success and allowed for practice for the future competitions. Junior Ben Schwartz said, “I thought the competition was really fun and a great way to make sure we are ready for states.”  The class worked hard to prepare for this hearing’s difficult constitutional questions, since We the People is one of the main focuses of the seminar’s curriculum.  Senior Jacob Couture felt that the work paid off saying, “Participating in We the People was a lot of fun.  I was happy to finally be able to present our answer to the deep questions posed to the team about our Constitution after weeks of preparation.”  Hopefully, the seminar class can take this experience and build on it with a victory at the state competition.[spacer height=”10px” id=”2″]