• Home

West Anchorage High School • Home of the Eagles
1700 Hillcrest Drive • Anchorage, Alaska 99517 • (907) 742-2500

West High “We The People” team has won the State Competition and will have the honor of representing the State of Alaska in Washington D.C., April 23rd-29th.  Students in this class have worked hundreds of hours preparing for this competition. The students who participated are the following:  This is the eighth year in a row that West High has won this prestigious competition.  We have placed four times at Nationals in previous years now giving Alaska the recognition it deserves in this Constitutional Law competition.   

The primary goal of the program is to promote civic responsibility and competence in students.  This competition raises students understanding of history, political science and jurisprudence.  This is accomplished by student involvement in a Senate Legislative Hearing competition.   This process encourages students to relate important constitutional concepts and principles to historical and contemporary situations as well as their own experiences.  The program helps students develop critical thinking and public speaking skills, as students must articulate the multiple sides of each issue this helps create a dialogue of divergent points of view.

The competition is a simulated congressional hearing.  Each competing class is divided into six groups, one group for each of the six units in the high school textbook.  During the competitive hearing, each group appears before a panel of judges and acts as constitutional experts on constitutional application, reasoning, use of supporting evidence, responsiveness, and participation. Students present a four-minute prepared response to a complex constitutional question then they experience and intense six-minute follow- up with a question and answer period.    The cumulative scores of all six- unit groups determine the winning class.

The West High Team now has eighteen new questions and are preparing to represent the State of Alaska at the three day National Competition in held in Washington D.C

We would like to send a special thank you to the following organizations, for financial support for our team:  British Petroleum, Alaska Bar Association, West PTSA, West Alumni Association, Maida Buckley, Steven and Patricia Lloyd, Elmendorf Officers Spouses Organization, CIRI, an Alaskan Native Corporation, White Spot Café, Representative Berta Gardner and Rotary of Alaska.   We cannot Thank you enough for recognizing the importance of rewarding students who work hard and accomplish their goals especially in the area of Constitutional Law.  

Because of West High’s state and national record we were also selected to participate in a television show called Citizen 2009 that will air on PBS in the summer.  Our students were filmed at their state competition and the national competition.

Pamela Orme
We the People Team Coach
Social Studies Department Chair
BP Teacher of Excellence 2007