Now that a few days have passed, Mr. Sam Ulmschneider, instructor and mentor, has a few insights to share with you about his 2023 ‘We the People’ team and their accomplishment of winning the school’s 5th national title in this competition.
“Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School For Government and International Studies represented Virginia at this week’s national We The People finals. For the fifth time in the program’s quarter-century history in Virginia, they won the championship for our state. The We The People program is increasingly valuable as our political culture becomes ever more polarized and combative. The organization and competition scoring system rewards original research, nuanced position-taking, and consideration of a variety of analytical and political positions – something which no standardized test or debate competition does.
We The People is a unique civic education program focused on asking students to respond to open-ended conversations about the institutions, ideals, and aspirations of our democratic society and engage in dialogue with each other and with adults to emerge with a nuanced understanding of these complex questions. Some of the questions they were asked to evaluate included elements such as “To what extent, if any, has bicameralism functioned the way the Founders intended?,” “Which of the issues that led to the Civil War did the Reconstruction amendments truly resolve?,” and “Is it appropriate for the government to limit free speech in times of war or national emergency? Why or why not?.”
This year’s team of six groups of four students spent weekends at dress rehearsal competitions and marathon research sessions, weeks in class narrowing down and adjusting their opening statements through as many as ten drafts, lunchtimes practicing their responses to freeform questions, and consulting outside experts via zoom. At the competition itself, they participated in three days of hearings with more than one thousand other students and dozens of judges from all over the nation and from many different walks of life. Their first place finish reflects not only their hard work and remarkable intellect, but also a long tradition both at our school and in our state of valuing civic education and civic engagement.”
Sam Ulmschneider
Instructor; AP US History, AP US Government, Political Theory, We The People, Senior Seminar
