A New President for President's Day

A couple weeks ago, Olivia let me know that her class had been studying government and had decided they wanted to form their own class government complete with Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.  She further informed me that she wanted to be president of said government...President Olivia P. Robinson... I liked the sound of that.

As Olivia began to make plans for speeches and campaign advertisements I was immediately reminded of my various attempts at student government during my days at Mountain View High School...ah, youth...

Anyway, I was successful as a sophomore in getting elected Junior Class Secretary and had a great time doing things like... planning proms... and as a Senior I tried my darnedest to make a good showing for some sort of "President" job (student body or class) but was nowhere near cool or interesting enough to garner the votes required. 

So, back to the present.  When Olivia came to me about her desire to become class president I had a number of conflicting emotions; excitement mixed with trepidation, hope mixed with fear, a strong desire to see her succeed but an irrational desire to shield her from failure...you know, basic parent kind of stuff.  In the end, it wasn't really all about me (what?!) and she entered the primary election, made a speech and won the primary!  A runoff happened to choose her competitors but she took the primaries by a landslide.

As we discussed plans for the actual election she asked about what kind of campaigning she should do, I suggested a humorous video (know your audience, right?) and she agreed.  She got the blessing of her teacher and we made plans.  Now, back to the past for a minute.  I remember one particular election video in High School that caught my attention and thought we could borrow the general theme and put our own spin on it.  The video in high school was from a kid whose dad worked as a sheriff or something and it featured him running from the police at night with calls from the officers chasing him of "what are you running for?", when they finally caught him he informed the officers that he was running for some sort of class office (get it?). 

Once again in the present, Olivia and I decided on a similar theme of running but more "marathon running" vs. "running from the authorities"...

Below, I present the final edit of said video.  It took us a couple days and many, many laughs to complete but was overall a very fun project.

In the end, all our efforts paid off and our dear Olivia was elected class president!  No small feat for a 4th grader in a mixed class of 4th, 5th and 6th graders.  I am very proud of her for many things, not least of which is not being afraid to try while knowing that she could fail but doing everything in her power to succeed. 

Love you, President Baby Girl!