This month, three students in Henry Maine’s eighth-grade English Language Arts class learned that they had swept the winnings in the 2018 Gaspee Days essay contest. The students, Matthew Santomassimo, Mia Rodriguez and Madison Alves came in first, second and third, respectively in the contest, which asked the students to think about how the Gaspee related to the phrase “taxation without representation.”

According to Maine, everyone had the opportunity to do the essay but it was not mandatory that the essay be entered into the contest.

“I hesitated about entering at first,” Santomassimo said. His peers, Alves and Rodriguez both decided there was nothing to lose and they would enter right away.

The prize was to ride in the Gaspee Days parade in a convertible and this was the fourth year that all three winners came from Maine’s class and the 15th year in a row he has had students choose to enter the contest. Alves had planned to run the Gaspee Days 5K road race and then to head to a soccer game, but chose to ride in the parade instead, before heading to the game.

Although they had some prior knowledge of the burning of the Gaspee and its significance to the American Revolution, each said they learned more after their research for the essay prompt and were surprised about how significant an event it was and how prominent Rhode Island’s history was in regards to the Revolution.

“At first, it was difficult because I had to figure out what ‘taxation without representation was,’” said Alves. “After that, it was easier once I’d figured it out.” “Most think about the Boston tea party more than the Gaspee when they think about the American Revolution,” Rodriguez said.

Maine said this year’s prompt, as always, made the students have to think outside the box when they were doing their writing.

“This was our fourth quarter writing assignment,” he said. “The prompt made it so that this was not to be a straight research paper. It gave them creative freedom and all three of them had a very strong voice in their writing.”

The students not only got to ride in the car for the parade but received the annual reward from Maine himself, a Del’s Lemonade at the end of the parade.

“That promise alone always gets a lot of entrants in the contest,” he said.