German students geared up to participate in the annual Houstonfest competition at Kingwood High School on Saturday, Feb. 7. Students were given the opportunity to compete in various contests, including oral, written, drama, art and music competitions. Students who place in the top 5 of each event will advance to compete at the Texas State German Contest, held in late February.
German teacher Hannah Henry has been participating in Houstonfest through her six years teaching, two of which have been at Bellaire.
“My goal, as with every year, is that my students have fun,” Henry said. “I want to make sure that they’re not only improving their language skills through preparing for their events, but also that they’re having fun while doing it. I think that’s what keeps kids coming back every single year to compete.”
Houstonfest provides opportunities for students to compete and get recognition for their hard work, with best performers in lower and upper levels of German being awarded $200 and scholarships of various amounts awarded to those nominated by teachers.
“I think my favorite memory of Houstonfest is getting to watch my students celebrate the fruits of their labor,” Henry said. “It’s getting to watch them at award ceremonies, cheering on their classmates, but also cheering on our entire school.”
After last year’s competition, the German program created a website with preparation materials in order to provide students with easily accessible study tools. The website assists students in viewing contest sign-ups and judging guidelines, along with materials such as Quizlets, videos, poetry and prose pieces.
“A lot of those materials are either teacher-found or student-produced,” Henry said. “We have students that are elected to be a representative for their particular event, and then they’re in charge of making sure that they’re collecting all the preparation materials for our website.”
Henry takes it upon herself to support her students through their extensive preparation process, ensuring that they memorize their lines for events like Puppet Show and Skit and are confident before the compete.
“I’ve gone as far as helping the kids write scripts and pumping them out in two hours or less, trying to make sure that my kids have everything that they need,” Henry said. “Sometimes it’s going as far as ordering costumes last minute and getting them shipped via Amazon Prime to my house so that they have something to wear.”
Seniors Alejandra Giron and Anna Burns have competed at Houstonfest the past 3 years. At last year’s Houstonfest, they saw a giant rocket for the Original Model event that kickstarted their innovation.
“I was like, we can do something better than that,” Giron said.
This year, they were inspired to create a gramophone from scratch after researching Emil Berliner, a German inventor who made the first gramophone in the U.S.
Giron first sat on the idea for a year before using many YouTube videos to learn the various components such as how gears work and making a soundbox.
“It took so much out of me,” Giron said. “I walked into a [machine] parts store for the first time, which is not what I expect to get out of a German classroom.”
During the engineering process, Giron learned patience above all, remaking the model three different times and each time altering the settings.
“I think I bought 40 bucks worth of stuff, and all of it was useless,” Giron said. “I would have part of it done, but then realize another part of it wouldn’t work. I would have to remake one part, but it would be a different size so it wouldn’t fit, so I would have to make a third part. When that wouldn’t fit, I’d have to redo it all again.”
Eventually, she was able to make the gramophone work and adequately play sound.
“As you’re making it, you start realizing how insane what you actually wanted to do is,” Giron said. “Then when it actually does work, you’re looking at it like ‘Wow, I made this thing, and I’m gonna go compete with it, and it might actually win.'”
This year, Giron entered in 13 different events, excited to compete. Junior Eric Spencer also entered in multiple events such as Grammar, Culture and Skit.
“Studying culture [Quizlets] has been really helpful,” Spencer said. “Personally, I would be lost without it. It’s especially really nice because they don’t tell you exactly what to study for, so it’s really helpful to have that bulk list of everything.”
On top of those events, Spencer is also doing Gingerbread House Non-Traditional Building. The Non-Traditional houses often include castles, churches and shoe houses that students design, bake and build from scratch. He was inspired after seeing a previous contestant’s performance last year.
“I’m really excited, but also stressed,” Spencer said. “There’s a lot of cramming for several other events, and trying to organize times where we can put the gingerbread house together and make everything has been really stressful.”
Students frequently use content and information about German history and facts, to study for the Culture test. With the help of “a lot of coffee in the morning,” Giron made 25 Quizlets and a “huge” Google Drive with poetry and prose videos and spelling lists to study.
“There’s documentation and a 150-plus page Google Document for all the culture information,” Giron said. “Then there’s also Google Documents with all of the poetry, the prose and the videos for listening and reading.”
Even with hours of work, Giron enjoys making culture presentations for German Club and attending Kaffestunde, an hour for German National Honor Society students to practice speaking German.
“I actually like it,” Giron said. “I enjoy making those culture presentations, and signing up for a bunch of events. As stressful as it is, it’s like ‘Well, I have 20 things to do today, let me see how much I can do or I can’t.'”
This will be Giron’s last year participating at Houstonfest, and even with weeks of preparation, it is always “a lot of fun to spend eight hours on a Saturday with your friends.”
“I’m excited,” Giron said. “I think Bellaire goes so insane for Houstonfest, especially compared to all the other schools. I feel like we’re just a little ball of feral Houstonfest sitting in the German room.”
At Houstonfest, the Non-Traditional Gingerbread House placed fourth, with Spencer advancing to state; Skit Level 3 placed third; Giron placed first in Culture Level 4 and the gramophone Original Model placed second. Overall the German program placed third in the Large School Sweepstakes category with 521 points.
