Armstrong, SHS students to compete at National History Day
Several students from Starkville High School and Armstrong Middle School will travel to the University of Maryland this summer to compete in National History Day.
Groups of students at the two schools placed at the state level in the website, dramatic narrative, documentary and research paper division. The state competition was held on the University of Southern Mississippi campus in Hattiesburg, where students were judged by history faculty and graduate students. After presenting at the University of Maryland in June, the group will tour landmarks in the Washington D.C. area before returning home. All projects followed this year’s theme of “Triumph and Tragedy.”
The group of eighth grader Lia Jones and seventh graders Evie Daniels, Tessa Luke and Lila Counterman received first place for performance in the junior division. Their project involves acting out trial scenes from the Salem Witch Trials.
Tessa said the group had spent almost a year working on the project.
“Most of the time we were writing the script and the end,” Tessa said. “We were actually in the middle while we were acting it out.”
Evie said the group had to add an additional scene at the last minute to fill time.
“We realized we needed Evie said.
Lila said the group spent a lot of time introducing characters into the project.
“We’re doing a bio and kind of like an interview of them, like different scenes,” Lila said. “We have three of the characters we were doing. The judges recommended to add in an interview with another character.”
The group of Starkville High school freshmen April Guo-yue, Amy Zhang, Jessica Yan won second place for documentary in the senior division The group produced a documentary about Chinese AIDS activist Gao Yaojie, who helped to inform China on the AIDS epidemic. Last year, the group also placed with a documentary on China’s “Ping-pong Diplomacy” in the 1970s.
“She basically helped to inform a lot of China that it was an issue, regarding the AIDS epidemic and how the virus was being transmitted,” April said. “She’s done a lot of work with the AIDS epidemic, so we wanted to focus on her, but we also describe the AIDS epidemic as a whole in other countries, too.”
Amy said the group wanted to pick a project based on their own Chinese heritage.
“We wanted to follow suit with something that was related to our families’ heritage,” Amy said.
Armstrong also swept the website category, with students from it,” the school winning, first second ant third place in the category for the junior division.
“We hope to continue that trend and be successful,” said SHS math teacher Maggie Wood, who sponsors National History Day along with her husband, SHS history teacher Craig Wood. “Last year, we did not sweep the middle school division the way we did this year, but we did place a larger number of students than any of the other schools did.”
Craig Wood has been nominated for the 2019 Hannah E. “Liz” Mcgregor Teacher Award, which recognizes two outstanding National History Day teachers at the national level.
The group is currently seeking donations for its trip. Anyone interested in supporting the team can drop checks made out to Starkville High School off at the school’s front office directed to Maggie Wood or Craig Wood.
“The work we’re putting in has garnered state attention,” Craig Wood said.