Many students come together for UIL Academics to compete in various organizations such as Journalism, Social Studies, Science, Business, Debate, Speech, and Math. The competitions vary with each subject from presentations, to tests and essays.
Our UIL Academic coordinator is Ms. Kyle, a beloved science teacher that specializes in Chemistry. She looks over the whole program with her assistant coach, Ms. Mukherjee.
“I am the UIL coordinator so I’m over all of the groups, but specifically science,” Ms. Kyle said. “The previous person left and they needed someone to do it, so I’ve been doing it for seven or eight years.”
Along with being the head coordinator, she specializes in science which covers the basis of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Her students are passionate about science organizations and participate in hand-written tests.
“I like working with the kids and it’s super fun when we win,” Kyle said. “It’s nice being successful and you know, even as nerdy as it sounds, going to take a science class and how excited kids get for it.”
Many students participate in other organizations like Social Studies, where they have to read a book and write a report over the book. It sparks different conversations over new non-fiction topics. Mr. Phillips, who oversees the Social Studies department, helps students achieve their potential.
“They basically read a book and essentially need to know the information on the book and any surrounding information from the time period of the book,” Mr.Phillips said. “I like having conversations with the kids and learning new topics.”
Just recently, the UIL Journalism took home first place in districts with almost 20 points. They compete in various writing competitions that include news, editorial, feature, and many more. The students were able to advance to regionals in all five of the competitions.
“This is my second year doing UIL and I want to do this for my career so I knew I had to learn all the formats and specifications early so I could get a head start.” senior Ada Myrick said. “I thought it was really cool to see all of our hard work pay off because you can practice so much and not see results but when you win, it feels good to see your work pay off.”
