May 18, 2005
Contestants students of history
East and West Junior High students excel at Michigan History Day Competition
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
From Paul McCartney to Pearl Harbor, the Underground Railroad to Women's Suffrage, area junior high students shone at the Michigan History Day Competition.
Held at Central Michigan University at the end of April, the competition for students in grades 4-12 drew students from around the state, with categories including individual paper, individual or group exhibit, individual or group documentary, individual or group performance. This year's theme was Communication: The Key to Understanding History.
Judges named five area students as finalists in their events, with one named an alternate (see sidebar.) These students are eligible to compete at the National History Day next month, held in College Park, Md. Three other area students received special awards for their efforts.
Four West Junior High School students delved into the difficult category of documentary, crafting a visual presentation that featured a range of sources including interviews, film and graphics.
"Documentary isn't really popular, you have to have a lot of resources," noted Juliana Kartsimas, who along with partner Aaron Jaffe completed a nine-minute piece on Freedom of Press: Are We at Risk?
The two tapped resources at Interlochen Arts Academy and other local video experts to film, edit, mix and compile their documentary.
"It's exciting, it's been real enriching to see what they can do," said Eunice Wollin Crockett , an eighth-grade teacher at East Junior High. "They experience an authentic process of research because they are not simply working with a topic, but a topic where they have to make connections. Then use critical thinking to tie it into a theme."
Students at East Junior High participated for the first year and Wollin Crockett noted that all academically talented students were required to do a project. In addition, other students were welcome to create one on their own time.
Stephanie Stevens participated despite receiving no class credit at East Junior High. The eighth grader created Songs & Quilts: Key to Escaping Slavery. An aunt in Texas who is a social studies teacher started her in the direction of the Underground Railroad. Stevens' research showed how slaves used songs and patterns in quilts as guideposts to freedom in northern states and Canada.
"It gives you more ways to learn history, through an interesting topic," said Stevens, who plans to attend the national competition next month. "It was more fun than just normal reading through a text book."
East Junior High School students Elise Kaufmann and Megan Gill enjoyed pulling together a display on the women's movement. They organized their information on a five-and-a-half-foot tall refrigerator box they turned into a voting booth, scrounging the box from Max's downtown.
But the judges were looking for more than sizzle in each project: students completed primary source research, compiled an extensive, annotated bibliography and answered detailed questions from the judges during the event. All of the students who competed at the state level spent many hours on their own researching and developing their project.
"I didn't expect that it would take so much effort and so long of a time," said Stevens, noting that finding facts went way beyond Google: "Especially using the Internet, it is more broad brush and you want to know the detail."