On Jan. 10, Hollis Brookline High School (HBHS) teacher Trevor Duval and his AP Government class competed at the We the People New Hampshire State Competition and won it for the second consecutive year. Duval, while originally starting at HBHS as a civics teacher, is now well known for his success with his AP Government students in We the People.
The We the People competitions are a large portion of Duval’s AP Government class. For the program, students work in small groups to improve their public speaking, research and writing skills to express their knowledge on one of six fundamental units. At the competitions, each group presents a four-minute essay and then answers questions from judges for six minutes. “My goal with this program is to help make students better educated about what our government is and what it is not,” said Duval.
AP Government at HBHS has a reputation for being an extremely difficult class, partially due to its intense summer work. This reputation leads to a dedicated team of students willing to put in the effort necessary to succeed together in the class.
For the second year since Duval started teaching AP Government, his students have chosen to accept the invitation to the We the People National Competition, held in Washington, D.C. in April. The national competition requires a significant time commitment, but the passionate AP Government students are willing to make it. “Last year when we went, the amount of work and effort the kids put into something that didn’t ‘count’ was absolutely phenomenal, and almost every single one of my students is willing to do that work again even though they know it doesn’t impact their grade or their GPA because they truly are interested in what we are doing,” said Duval.
While Duval credits his students for their hard work and success with We the People, he himself also helps motivate them by focusing the course on the competition for the first semester. “I count the state finals as their midterm because we spend almost the entire first semester working on it. But if they win the state championship, how do I possibly give them anything less than 100 percent? So for a lot of kids, that’s their motivation,” he said.
Duval’s students are now in the process of preparing for their national competition before heading to Washington, D.C.
