Boy's and Girl's State

Each year our National Honors Society chapter sponsors a junior boy and a junior girl to attend Boy's State and Girl's State.  These are intensive week-long mock governments and presentations sponsored by the American Legion and are held at college campuses (Boy's State is at Rivier University in Nashua while Girl's State is at Franklin Pierce University in Ringe). 

As I am the advisor for our Youth and Government program and the AP US History teacher (which is all juniors), I have the privilege of choosing the students who go each summer.  This year Connor Fitzgerald '13 and Erica Fowler '13 attended Boy's State and Girl's State.  Erica is also going on our trip to Philadelphia at the end of this month and when I saw her mother at our planning meeting a couple of weeks back, she told me that Erica was loving Girl's State.  Connor's mom told me the same thing - he posted something on Facebook about being sleep deprived (they keep them going from 6am-11pm) but loving it. 

Connor invited me to the Boy's State graduation ceremony this past Friday night and I was happy to attend.  About 60 boys took part and you can tell they really came together during the week.  The ceremony was about 2 hours and was a lot of recognitions and awards.  The keynote address was by Kevin Landrigan, the political reporter for the Nashua Telegraph. 

It was nice to see so many boys fired up for government, politics, and civic engagement.  The American Legion does a great job putting this on every year and the kids really seemed to love it.  When the Speaker of the House motioned to adjourn the graduation, the kids voted nay - they didn't want to leave!