UIL Academics is competitive like sports, but with your everyday academic classes taught to you. There are many different UIL Academics events that students can try out for and participate in that lets them learn while also being fun and competitive.
“It is important because it creates a space for those students who still want to compete on a state level,” English teacher Arden Hart said. “Maybe they don’t have the best hand-eye coordination, maybe their talent is their brain.”
While there are many students who love to be outside and shoot hoops, score goals, and other things that involve physical activity and sweating, there are also many other students that just want to concentrate on their knowledge and use their skills in a convenient way that doesn’t involve too much sweat.
“UIL Academics is the culmination of everything that we have taught students, putting it into action,” Debate teacher Eric Beane said. “I think UIL Academics is a really good opportunity for students to show what they have learned and to earn great scholarship opportunities if they do really well.”
As previously stated, students can make big investments into their future with UIL Academics. That is a big deal for high schoolers since universities are expensive to pay for nowadays.
“Any student who advances to State competition, even if they don’t place at state, just that they made it to state, is eligible for Academic UIL specific scholarships that can be fairly sizable,” English teacher Kimberly Ward said. “These scholarships are only usable for in-state colleges however.”
There are many departments in UIL Academics. All of them are important, but different in many ways. For example, there are debate and literature related events. Beane is in charge of Lincoln Douglas Debate, Policy Debate, Congressional Debate, Persuasive Speaking, Informative Speaking, Poetry, and Prose.
“For Prose and Poetry, you just get up there, and you have a binder in front of you that has the poem or prose in it,” Beane said. “You look down and act it out. You just have to reference the script a little bit and what you think the author’s intent was. The events for Speech and Debate are structured like a tournament. I believe other events take just a day, but Speech and Debate does require an additional day just because of how long the events are.”
There are also journalism related events. Journalism teacher James Ricks is in charge of Editorial Writing, Feature Writing, Headline Writing, News Writing, and Copy Editing events.
“We have had historically a very successful journalism team here at Langham Creek,” Ricks said. “The last two years we were the district champions. The year before that, I think we were second and third place and the couple years before that. And so we’ve been very competitive for many years. I’ve had kids who never took journalism come out and make the team. And then often they’ll take journalism the next year because they find out they really love it and they’re good at it.”
Next, there are Social Studies and Spelling contests. This year, there isn’t a sponsor for Current Issues and Events, but there is still an event for Social Studies.
“I am the sponsor for the Social Studies Contest and the co-sponsor for the Spelling Contest, alongside Kimberly Ward,” World History teacher Hillary Wyatt said. “For Social Studies, UIL gives the students a new topic every year to sink their teeth into; this year, they will be exploring the politics of 1800s America. For Spelling, our students have an ultra-long list of extremely hard words that they will be tested on at District. They spend their year taking sections at a time, memorizing spelling and learning definitions.”
There are a few English based events that are hosted by a few of the teachers. There is Ready Writing, Spelling, and Literary Criticism.
“Ready Writing is a 2 hour event where they are given 2 prompts to choose from. The student then has two hours to brainstorm, compose, revise and edit and print their response.” Ward said. “Ready Writers start first, so we’ll go find the room and make sure that they have all they need, that their computer works, that it’s hooked up to the printer. Then I make sure that they are checked in and let them write.”
Literary Criticism is another English related UIL Academic. Hart is the sponsor for Literary Criticism along with Ward. Although Ward doesn’t attend the meetings, to Hart, she is still a great helping hand for their competitive Literary Criticism team.
“The state decides what readings we’re gonna have that year. So I teach them everything that there is to know about those readings, all of that kind of stuff,” Hart said. “I also teach them test taking strategies because at the end, they do take a test. So our reading for this year is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Our drama is Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. And our poet this year is Emily Dickinson.”
Those are just a few of the UIL Academics events. There is also Science, Computer Science, Calculator Applications, Mathematics, and Number Sense. All the different departments are great in their own way, with sponsors who are always busy and trying to encourage their teams to do great. Both the teachers and the students can have a wonderful experience with UIL Academics
“I love seeing students get to do what they love,” Ward said. “Even if it’s not in my content, it’s fun seeing students excited about working hard at something and seeing their work come to fruition.”
Some teachers even did UIL Academics themselves when they were students, like Wyatt, for example.
“Throughout my own years in school, I participated in Current Events, Debate, Calculator Applications, and Spelling,” Wyatt said. “All of them were so much fun, as you got to delve much deeper into the topics that you enjoy in your regular high school life.”
UIL Academics is a special way to let students build a community and learn more about what they truly like to do or just experiencing different things they find an interest in.
“The only requirement that we have is that you are currently passing your classes,” Beane said. “You don’t have to have any prior experience whatsoever to be part of our team and to engage in UIL Academics. We would love to have you, that’s the only other thing.”
This all comes to show why UIL Academics is important here at Langham Creek. It is very special to all the sponsors, and they can contribute a lot to the students’ future life after graduating high school.
