At Davie High School, students are given many opportunities to share their beliefs and interests. From clubs like Heroes of Hope that use volunteer opportunities to spread the message presented by House of Hope to simple conversations that a student can have with a teacher, everyone has a chance to be heard. A small part of the conversation occurs in Matt Barker’s English III class where students often voice their own thoughts and opinions through discussion, specifically during “news and worldviews,” a short part of class where the students can discuss news articles and learn how to check the validity of a story by using multiple sources.
During one such conversation at the beginning of October amid numerous stories about the upcoming election and recent hurricane damage, the discussion suddenly took a surprising shift, becoming, in the words of junior Ava Jane Tomlinson, “a fun new thing to keep up with at the beginning of class.” The fun new thing she was referring to was the week-long competition known as Fat Bear Week.
When first introduced to the concept, many students likely didn’t give it a second thought. The following session of news and worldviews, however, was when the competition caught the attention of Barker, who pulled the bracket up on the screen at the front of his classroom. As the images of the bears loaded, along with the colorful website, some students immediately became invested in these hefty hunters. By the end of the week, many in the class could be found voting for their favorite bear. When class time would allow, students would even debate on who they believed should win the competition.
“It was the exact kind of absurd that I love to see in class,” Barker said. “It’s important to talk about politics and the more ‘serious’ subjects out there. But it’s also nice, and maybe even just as important at times, to talk about the fun stuff.”
Even other teachers throughout the school got to learn about Fat Bear Week, such as robotics teacher Will Miner who described the competition as “a lot of fun.” For many people who had only heard of Fat Bear Week through news and world views, it seemed like something that might not mean a lot or achieve anything productive, but over the course of the competition, the class found out how wrong that idea was. In reality, this competition provides a fun way for people to help preserve the legacy of some of the largest animals in North America.
Fat Bear Week is hosted annually by Katmai National Park in Alaska from October 2–8. While the competition itself only lasts a week, the process for these brown bears begins as soon as their hibernation ends, usually around April or May. September is an especially important time for the bears because this is when they can start to catch salmon for the extra calories they need for their next hibernation. These extra calories are what Fat Bear Week has come to appreciate about these corpulent competitors.
The bears are typically given identification numbers and sometimes even given nicknames. Fat Bear Week began in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday, with the winner being Bear 480, who was lovingly nicknamed Otis. Otis proceeded to win in multiple other competitions in 2016, 2017, and most recently in 2021. The Hall of Champions is filled with many fun names like Beadnose, Holly, and, most recently, Grazer. But it is not only the winners who get fun nicknames; sometimes well-loved competitors also gain nicknames. This year’s runner-up was given the nickname Chunk, which accurately represents his size.
For many of the students in Barker’s class, Chunk’s defeat at the paws of Grazer was seen as an absolute upset. Junior Makayla Van Meter became particularly passionate about the results of this year’s competition.
“I think that 32 Chuck should’ve won,” Van Meter said. “If you really looked at the size on that bear, he had an easy advantage over 128 Grazer… [he] should not have won. I think that the votes were rigged because he was in the competition last year.”
While the competition was over in just a week, its impact on the bears lasts much longer. Katmai National Park uses the cameras set up to watch the bears hunt to research the interactions between the bears and learn more about how exactly they prepare for hibernation. The money that comes from this competition is also used to help the park and preserve the habitat for the bears and the many other animals that live in the park. So if you choose to participate by voting in Fat Bear Week as a fun competition, you can know that you’re also helping create a future for the many animals of Katmai National Park.
