Three Edgewood Middle School teams qualified for state competition after participating Saturday in National History Day at Saint Mary’s College in South Bend. State contest will be May 3 at Marian University in Indianapolis. According to Edgewood U.S. history teacher Tim Devlin, 35 Edgewood students on seven teams competed at National History Day. “It’s 1,000 kids across the nation creating projects on a theme. The theme this year is ‘Rights and Responsibilities in History,’” Devlin said. Edgewood’s entire eighth-grade class, about 300 students, worked on projects but only seven groups went to the regional contest. This was the first year Edgewood sent students to the competition, and they participated in the Group Exhibit category. At regionals, Devlin said the students were asked questions regarding historic content and the overall construction of their display boards. He said Edgewood would make participation in National History Day an annual event. “We’ve been doing Project Based Learning this year instead of lectures. This allows kids to work at their own pace, with checkpoints of course, and develop their own ideas,” Devlin said. History teacher Mike Howard said the competition is technically open to any point of historical reference, but “we narrowed it to U.S. history we’ve covered in class, so (the students) focused on something we’ve studied.” Finishing in first place was the team of Kylee Gudeman, Caleb Warner, Gabby Hamill, Morgan Smith and Matthew Harstine. Gudeman said their project was on the Tea Act, Boston Tea Party and The Intolerable Acts. “We based it on tea and the Colonies,” she said, and they focused on the years 1770 to 1775. They were important, Gudeman indicated, because they were a big turning point of the colonists rebelling against the British authority. “There were different consequences but because of it, the rebels were punished severely by the British authority, but it also showed (the colonists) they could stand up to overruling government,” she concluded. Two groups tied for second. Students on those teams included Sarah Meade, Alex Koontz, Hannah Rice, Claire Rich, Meredith Phipps, Kyle Bartol, Marc Motter, Sam Groninger, Ridley Lemon and Nolan Swihart. Motter said his group’s project was about the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. “It was the first African-American regiment in U.S. history. It set the tone for African-Americans to perform exceptionally in military service,” Motter stated. He said they concentrated mainly on the Regiment’s main action, which was during the Civil War in 1864 at the Battle of Ft. Wagner. Rice was in a group of all girls and they focused on women’s rights, including voting rights and religion. She said they looked at women fighting for rights as far back as the 1800s and included Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony. “They really voiced their opinions and fought for rights through protest,” Rice said. “We are all young women so we felt a deep passion for it. It felt good to us that we had women like them that stood up for their rights,” she stated. Devlin said the three teams that placed were given medals and granted permission to enter the state competition. Howard said that at the national level there are numerous scholarship opportunities available. In 2011, Warsaw Community High School student Zack Rooker won the grand prize at The Kenneth E. Behring National History Day contest at University of Maryland at College Park near Washington D.C. Rooker was awarded the David Van Tassel Founder Award, a four-year tuition scholarship to Case Western Reserve University, a major research university located in Cleveland, Ohio. Between now and the state contest, Devlin said the students can make changes to their projects. Howard noted Edgewood has an intraschool competition with the students’ projects. They will be presenting their projects, which will be open to the public, March 5 during class periods. Devlin added that the projects also will be on display later in the year at Edgewood’s “Evening with the Arts.” He noted that Grace College student Meredith Baker also was a big help with the projects.
