EB Frink social studies teacher Chadwick Stokes and North Lenoir High sophomore David Buck, a former student, have teamed up again as members of a select group of teacher-student duos chosen to represent the 13 original colonies in the first-ever Young People’s Continental Congress. As a student at Frink, David helped create the school’s unique History Lab and designed the door decoration.

A middle school teacher and a high school student from Lenoir County Public Schools are teaming up to represent the state of North Carolina in a months-long learning opportunity that draws attention to the 250th anniversary of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774.

Chadwick Stokes of EB Frink Middle School and David Buck, a sophomore at North Lenoir High School, are part of a select group of teacher-student duos chosen to represent the 13 original colonies in the first-ever Young People’s Continental Congress.

The group is already involved in online discussions and study assignments and will gather in Philadelphia the week of July 15 “to explore our nation’s founding principles in their historical context and how they continue to impact democracy,” according to the National History Day organization, a planner and host of the Young People’s Continental Congress.

In Philadelphia, the group with take part in special programming at Carpenters’ Hall, where the Continental Congress met, and in field learning opportunities at the National Constitution Center, the Museum of the American Revolution and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

“It’s going to be a week-long adventure,” Stokes said. “But there’s a lot of work involved leading up to that.”

Monthly meetings of the group via Zoom, homework assignments, required readings and even a community project for the student members of the teams lay the groundwork for the Philadelphia trip.

“We do a lot of discussions with the other group members in the Young People’s Continental Congress,” David said. “We really engage with the other students and other teachers. Each month we go live with professors to learn more about Carpenter’s Hall and the First Continental Congress.”

He and Stokes share a keen interest in the colonial period of American history, an interest cultivated in the student by a “very hands-on” teacher.

“Mr. Stokes is the one who really got me into history,” said David, who was in Stokes’ social studies class in the seventh and eighth grades at Frink.  “It’s not every day that you get a teacher like him. I liked the way he engaged. He’s a very hands-on person. I feel more able to learn if I have it in front of me rather than on a piece of paper.”

For his part, David was instrumental in helping create the unique History Lab at Frink and, as an eighth grader, won the award Frink presents to the top history student. When Stokes was tapped as the teacher to represent the state for the Young People’s Continental Congress, he was tasked with choosing a student to round out the team. He didn’t have to look far.

“He was my No. 1 draft pick,” Stokes said of his former student. “We’ve kept in touch and I’ve seen him grow.”

David is a junior member of the CSS Neuse II board of directors and the Lenoir County Historical Association board. As his community service project, he plans to stage a dramatization of the First Continental Congress on the grounds of Historic Harmony Hall in downtown Kinston.

That’s particularly fitting, considering that Harmony Hall, the oldest surviving residence in Lenoir County, was once the home of Richard Caswell, arguably the area’s most famous colonial-era citizen, the state’s first elected governor – and a delegate to the First Continental Congress.

“You don’t hear a lot about the First Continental Congress. You hear more about the Second, because that’s when they declared independence,” David said. “But if you look at the First, that’s really the first big stepping stone into us going into the Revolutionary War.”