Final judging of the Americanism Essay Contest for the Northwest District of Oklahoma for 2019-20 has been completed. The theme was “What Does Freedom of Speech Mean to Me?” A huge round of applause and many thanks to all the students, parents, guardians and teachers who followed through on the process to reach the submission and judging stages of this contest.

The submissions were excellent and once again made the job of judging quite difficult. To complicate things, due to the unprecedented pandemic our challenge was to complete the judging while keeping our team of judges safe. The entries...