Schools
Middle School Student a Two-Time Geography Bee Winner
Sixth-grader wins school-wide Geography Bee for second year in a row; now, he may be headed to state or national competitions.
Having confidence and doing some studying paid off for sixth-grader Josey Schanen when he won the school-wide National Geographic Geography Bee held at on Tuesday night.
“I've been studying ... I studied a little bit recently, but I studied a lot over winter break,” Schanen said. "I'm not as nervous as I was last year. I think I've got it."
Schanen and seven other students, ranging from fifth to eighth grade, sat in a row on the cafeteria stage and answered a series of questions given by seventh grade Social Studies teacher, Laura Rashid.
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“The kids think it's a fun thing to compete. Many, many kids do the grade level competition,” Rashid said. All 800 students at the middle school are invited to take a written test. The two students from each grade who scored the highest on the written test compete in the school-wide competition.
"The questions are challenging," Rashid noted, stating they cover regions from all over the world.
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This year, the students from each grade were: Fifth-graders Jake Markiewicz and Brianna Schweitzer; sixth-graders Josey Schanen and Tommy Huegerich; seventh-graders Louie Shurrer and Patrick Knowski; and eighth-graders Max Noll and Joe Levandowski.
Rashid said the competition is neat because the questions go beyond the physical location of a place.
"I like that it's a good chance for students to show how much they know about geography and cultures ... it's a nice variety of questions about our world," she said.
Since Schanen passed the school-wide competition, he will now take another written test in the next week, which will be turned in to National Geographic. If he scores well on that, he could possibly go on to compete in a state-wide and maybe even the national competitions.
"The national winner gets a $10,000 scholarship bond, so it's very cool," Rashid said.
Eighth-grade Social Studies teacher Sandy Daevel and Assistant Principal Liz Ferger helped with scoring and timekeeping.
Schanen said he learned about the Geography Bee for the first time last year. He likes learning about geography, particularly anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa and areas of Asia.
"I don't just like U.S. geography, I like world geography and also I like cultural geography," he said.