Washington Township Elementary students got the opportunity to meet ‘Miss America’ on Monday as Indiana’s own Katie Stam visited the school to speak with kids about following their dreams, learning everyday and the new book she has coming out. The second part of the days convocation was an award ceremony recognizing the schools 48 students from 4th and 5th grade who had achieved High Honor Roll for the fall semester.
Stam, who hails from Seymour, Indiana, won the title of ‘Miss America’ in 2009, the same year she was first supposed to visit the school but, as Washington Township Principal Rik Ihssen pointed out, she had a pretty busy schedule at the time.
“Katie was supposed to come and speak as ‘Miss Indiana’ in 2009,” said Ihssen. “We were told that there were only three reasons why she wouldn’t be able to come. If she was sick, if there was bad weather or if she won the pageant and for as long as they’ve had the ‘Miss America’ pageant ‘Miss Indiana’ has never won. Well, she ended up winning the pageant which was the first time in Indiana history.”
“So then I saw her in a newspaper article and found out that she was living in the Indianapolis area so I figured out how to get in contact with her agent,” Ihssen said. “I asked her if she would be able to come up and speak to the kids and she said yes. She’s publishing a book as well so she shared that with the kids too. We also do the Young Authors Convos where we have children's authors come in and explain the writing process and how they wrote the book so we thought we would combine the two into one big convocation.”
Stam, who always wanted to write children's books, credits her sister, Heather, for the inspiration to write her first book about a child who dreams of one day becoming Miss America called, “I Want To Be Miss America.”
“As soon as I got off the phone with Heather I said, ‘Oh that’s a great idea’!” Stam said. “That’s a story I want to tell and it’s my story so that’s when I wrote ‘I Want To Be Miss America’. I absolutely love little kids and I’m so excited to be here today to come and talk about children’s books and the books that I’ve been able to write and am working on getting published. It is such a fun process.”
“”Regardless of what you want to be, the most important thing is about being a good person first,” said Stam. “That is what message I wanted to spread when it came to the message of my children’s book.”
Along with her new book, Stam brought with her the ‘Miss America’ sash and tiara she won in 2009 as well as the sash she had made as a child of six while dreaming of winning the pageant. While the sash and tiara mean a great deal to her, the purple sash Stam made when she was six years old means just as much.
“One represents the start of a dream and the other represents the realization of that dream,” said Stam. “No matter how old you are whatever you want to be you absolutely can do it. You can only do it if you work hard, if you make good decisions and you get a good education. Education is the key to your future. Take every single opportunity to learn everything you can. Dream big because no dream is too big!”