Capitol

Thankfully my illness lasted only one day. I'm feeling much better, though my tummy is still a little rumbly from time to time. My kids did great in Mr. E's room. He said they didn't make a peep all day.

Today, the 5-8th graders went to the state capitol. A parent who used to work as a legislative assistant planned everything, so I got to take it easy-ish today. We took a bus up, met with our local representatives and senator, sat in on a committee hearing, and talked to a lobbyist. I think I finally understand what they do now... they're hired by companies or groups of people to 'talk government' with elected officials in an attempt to get them to vote a certain way or make certain legislature. We also took a tour of the capitol and met with the Lieutenant Governor of our state (basically Minnesota's vice president). That was pretty cool. Peggy is the first Native American to be elected lieutenant governor and the second Native American to be elected to state office in the US.

The last thing we did was to watch the House in session. We sat up in the galley (open to the public). But, our four 8th graders were able to sit on the House floor (you need special passes to do that), and Rep. Brand made a special announcement about our school to the whole room. The rest of the House recognized us with a standing ovation! It was pretty neat. Session was also very short. The bills on the docket got sent back to committee/their authors so it lasted about 15-20min total, if that.

We got a lot of compliments on our students today. The best one was from Senator Frentz who told our Courtland Fire Chief (up at the capitol today to talk about Hwy 14 expansion from a safety perspective) that our kids were the best dressed group of students he's ever seen. Sweet!

My favorite part of the day was probably watching our students pretend to be in court. The room we used as our base had a big U-shaped table with microphones for each seat. They decided to sit there and call people up to the 'witness' stand in the center of the U. The 'crimes' they tried their classmates for were quite interesting ranging from stealing Swiss Rolls to breaking into a house to play "Fortnite" to stabbing a person. It was cool to see them work out the issues and take what they knew about the justice system and apply it in fun. They even called me to the witness stand once!