Finally I’m getting to write about our FPS trip. It’s taken some time to recover from it!
There were 14 kids ages 11 and 12, 1 coach, 3 evaluators (including me), and 4 chaperones/monitors. I was lucky and roomed with another evaluator without any kids. Though we rarely spent any time in our own rooms.
The schedule was intense, but the kids handled it wonderfully! They were under so much pressure!
We got there on Sunday, April 11th and checked into our rooms. At 7:30 pm, the opening ceremony began, where they introduced all of the teams. There were three levels: junior (grades 4-6), middle (grades 7-9), and senior (grades 10-12). Some of the team members carried a banner down the aisle. The funniest one had a high school boy walking down holding up his hands with an invisible banner. He “held” it the entire time, while the other schools were being announced. LOL!
Monday, April 12th was the first competition day. All of the kids were delivered around 8:45 am to their appropriate location for the scenario booklet competition. We had two teams of four competing, two individuals (including my son), and the rest were competing as alternates. The competition started at 9 am and continued to 11 am. During this time, I was in a meeting with the coach and other evaluators. When it was over, we all met for lunch, while the two teams prepared for their action plans (skits). At 1 pm, we went to evaluate the booklets. Since our teams were in the junior level, we were only allowed to evaluate the middle and senior levels.
In the meantime, the teams began their skits at 1:30 pm. We finished around 5 pm with the evaluations and met up with everyone for dinner before going to the Community Problem Solvers showcase. The schools that participate in this do projects that help solve community problems.
Tuesday, April 13th was the second day of competitions. At 9 am the kids began their scenario writing competition. This time though they were put into groups with students from other schools to write on a scenario. This went on until 11:30 am. We met up again afterwards for lunch, then I grabbed up a team for Circus Maximus. This was very interesting! They moved around to different areas of the hotel competing in different tasks, where they got points depending on how well they did. Since they were all team tasks, the amount of points really depended on how well they worked together to complete the tasks. The first one we went to involved some word games. From there we did a relay race. They had to fill up a bucket with water using a small cup and following an obstacle course. The remaining tasks involved finding pacman papers while blindfolded and being directed; build a boat to float a roll of pennies with the supplies given; fill up squares to make a picture using tetris pieces; and build a tower out of aluminum foil.
We had some time afterwards to go grab some dinner. We all split up with some going to the Thai/Sushi place, some going to Subway, and we went to Kelsey’s Pizzeria. It was wonderful! I got the Mediterranean Pasta, my son got the Fettuccine Alfredo with Shrimp, two of the kids shared a cheese pizza, and another evaluator had the Chicken Parmigiana. The menu can be found here.
When we finished we met up with the others to bring the kids to the dance. They staggered the kids so the juniors were not there when the seniors were. The dance was from 8 pm until 12 am. The juniors were allowed from 8 pm to 10 pm; the middle kids were allowed from 9 pm to 11 pm; and the seniors were allowed from 10 pm to 12 am.
On Wednesday, April 14th we had to check out of our hotel before the awards ceremony. The awards were very nerve racking! The awesome thing is that our county’s superintendent of schools came to the awards because we have a large representation for our county. I was really surprised that he was there because he is leaving us for a new job opportunity in Cairo, Egypt at the end of the school year. We ended up doing very well with awards, though not as well as we would have liked, we were still very happy with the results and proud of all the kids! Three of our kids placed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the scenario writing competition and one kid placed 6th in the alternate scenario booklet competition.
Here are the awards given out that day:
The other elementary school from our county did a wonderful job on their Community Problem Solvers project, but did not win any awards. The high school that came to represent our county had a huge amount of kids present. They won probably half of all the awards! They did a terrific job! Of course, they are losing more than half of the kids after this year because they are seniors. I can only hope the program at the other high school becomes as good as this one since many of the kids in our group will be going to it. Otherwise, they’ll have to compete for this one.
After the award ceremony, we all went our separate ways. Most of the kids along with the adults went onto the bus to head back home. My son and I drove ourselves so we were able to take our time and stop for lunch.
We have a few more FPS meetings left so the kids can work on presentations to present to the PTO in May. The PTO paid for two of our rooms at the hotel. Next year all but one kid will be moving up to the middle school. The teacher/coach there is not really into FPS that much and was not represented at the competition other than one team that went with the high school. We are hoping our current coach will take on our team in addition to her new junior team next year.
