State Competition Blues

If you are not a part of my current "We the People" class of seniors, it might be hard to understand all of this. We are not happy people right now, because we felt the pain of disappointment in an unusually strong way. I think that many looking from the outside in will wonder if we were "sore losers" or "whiners". I don't think my students are any of those things. They are twenty wonderful people who joined me for a wild ride this year in quest of, well, something more than "Honorable Mention".

The 2005 Washington State "We the People" Competition is now history. This year, Mt. Rainier went into the competition with a very strong class and very high expectations. We had every reason to believe that we were in the hunt for coming out near, if not on top, this year. I really believed that for the first time in a decade, someone besides Tahoma High School would represent the State of Washington at Nationals in Washington, D.C. Perhaps this is why it hurt so much to come away with nothing more than an "Honorable Mention".

After the awards ceremony, my students were shocked, disappointed and experienced a really deep sense of loss. I think that it hit some of us (I include myself) so hard that we seemed to be experiencing the five stages of grief that accompany great trauma or loss.

Why? We really did not have any reason to hang our heads.

We had a great year; we had a lot of fun and my students learned a lot. Without taking anything away from my previous WTP classes, they became the most prepared and made the finest presentations of any group I have ever taken to the WTP State Competition.

I am very proud of my class this year. They did an awesome job at State, but the competition was tough. Once again, Tahoma High School finished first. Gig Harbor second. Evergreen High (from near Vancouver, WA) came in third. We were left in the nebulous category of "Honorable Mention". We haven't received our scored yet, and don't know how close we were to placing in the top three.

I felt bad for all of them because they could not come away with a more tangible reward for all of their efforts and achievements. We talked on the bus on the way home, and had some group counseling in class on Friday. I think that a lot of the class is working its way toward the state of "acceptance". For the first time ever, my class talked about wanting to send Tahoma H.S. a good luck card!

The simple fact is that we do have a lot to celebrate, and a lot to look back on with pride. We learned a lot, and not all of it was about the U.S. Constitution. We learned about teamwork and supporting one another. We learned that we love working with one another, and a lot of us wish that the semester could keep going. We do have a couple of weeks left, and we will find a time and a place to celebrate our year.