Dear Editor,

In the past, Rachel Carson has participated in competitions such as the AMC 8 and Science Olympiad. However, we are yet to see an intra-school, RCMS organized competition.

“School wide competitions would be amazing because they would get the school’s inner fighting spirit out, as well as appreciating the talents the participants have,” said Aditya Pujari, a seventh-grader at RCMS.

Our interviews showed that chess, Rubik’s cube speedsolving, and trivia are among the most wanted competitions. These competitions build growth mindsets and mental resilience. For example, chess players have shown better cognitive ability than non-chess players and the skills required to excel in the game are linked to processing speed, memory and fluid reasoning. Rubik’s cube speedsolving increases both processing speed and hand-eye coordination. As you can see, implementing competitions would be nothing but beneficial to the students of RCMS.

We should start with after-school clubs. Chess and speedsolving already have clubs and they could host competitions during club times.

“Every month or so in Mcnair, which was my elementary school, we had chess competitions and they were a blast,” said Aditya.

Many people enjoy trivia as well and it’s only a matter of time before we have a club for it.

“In 5th and 6th grade we did trivia and we were always excited when our teacher announced that we were going to play,” said Anay Bansal, another seventh-grader in RCMS.

Intra-school competitions are easy to manage with our existing resources, and it would only take student initiative to get competitions starting here at RCMS.

Sincerely,

Rishi Jagarlapudi

Seventh Grade, Herndon