By Kathy Yahr

The Winter Olympics have been over for more than a month, but the games themselves were just a springboard of learning for the fifth through eighth grade students at Twin Hills School. After observing what was needed for a city to host the games, the 8 students set out on a worldwide search to locate the perfect site for a future winter games. The result? Anchorage, Alaska was selected by all as the best possible location.

With a familiar location selected, the task was now to sell this idea to the Olympic Committee. How could eight students from rural Alaska convince the world that Anchorage has the right facilities and easily accessible locations for each of the venues?

The students started by studying maps of Anchorage along with their knowledge of existing facilities. They selected locations for each venue, noting sites for potential construction of new stadiums, ski-jumping, bobsled and luge runs. They followed Salt Lake’s example of using local university housing as the site for the Olympic village. When completed, the relief maps created by the students covered an area from Hatcher Pass to Girdwood.

With the sports and athletes taken care of, the students turned their attention to caring for the needs of thousands of visitors. Researching hotels, restaurants and travel costs, they found that Anchorage would be an excellent location full of a variety of amenities for visitors of various resource levels. Based on their own prior knowledge and additional research conducted on the Internet, they found many attractions and activities to lure visitors to both Anchorage and the Olympics. Each student then created a brochure to convince the world that Anchorage would be an exciting, interesting and hospitable place to hold the winter games. Each student designed a t-shirt to promote the Anchorage Winter Games.

To complete their project, each group of four students conducted a taped interview to answer questions that both potential visitors and those on the Olympic Selection Committee might ask about the desirability of Anchorage as a host site. The students were calm and confident in the face of questions thrown at them by the interviewer. The finished product, including the student’s video and brochure, was sent to the Olympic Selection Committee. We don’t have a response yet, but we are certain that Alaska has what it takes to host a future Winter Olympic Games.
 
 

Letter received from Olympic Committee
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