Local Students Headed To National History ContestThree students from Warsaw Community Schools will compete at nationals for National History Day June 13-17 in Maryland.
And it's not the first time for two of the three students.
Warsaw Community High School sophomore Zack Rooker will be competing at nationals for the fourth year, while eighth-grader Mayra Malagon, Edgewood Middle School, will be competing for the second time. Vanessa Malagon, also an eighth-grader at Edgewood, is making her first trip.
National History Day competition has five different project categories, including performance, documentary, Web site, research paper and exhibit. Rooker is competing in the senior individual documentary category, while Vanessa Malagon and Mayra Malagon entered with their performance.
The theme for this year's competition is "Innovation & History: Impact & Change."
"I decided to take a look at when innovation is evil because we normally think innovation is a good thing," said Rooker.
In May 2009, when Rooker found out what the theme would be for 2010, he picked several innovations he had an interest in. He asked himself what the innovation, impact and change would be for each one.
He chose to do a 10-minute documentary on Hitler's Final Solution, the holocaust. His documentary covers from the invasion of Russian on June 22, 1941, to the Wannsee Conference June 20, 1942.
"It talks about innovation that occurred at that time in how the Final Solution was carried out," said Rooker.
For his documentary, Rooker traveled to Washington, D.C., to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was able to interview two Holocaust survivors there and the librarian. While in the area, he also interviewed a professor of history at American University, Dr. Richard Breitman. He then interviewed Dr. Christopher Browning and Dr. Mark Roseman.
Traveling to Terre Haute, Rooker interviewed Ava Kor, a survivor of Auschwitz. Finally, he interviewed Nanga Kaye, a refugee from Chad whose brother was killed. Kaye witnessed some of the protests to get the government to intervene in Rwanda during the genocide there.
"I got about 11 hours of interview footage that I had to condense down to a 10-minute documentary," said Rooker.
On March 27, Rooker took first at district competition at St. Mary's College, South Bend. He placed first at state competition May 8 in Indianapolis. First- and second-place winners at state move on to nationals. Nationals will be at the University of Maryland, College Park, Md.
There will be 80 to 100 projects in each category. Every entry competes at least once, with the top 10 moving on to finals. Judges will make their decision based on performance, paperwork and questions and answers.
For Mayra and Vanessa, their path started last year when project sponsor Dick Rooker invited Mayra to compete in National History Day with three other students. They did a performance on Frederick Douglass.
A friend of the Rookers suggested Mayra could do a performance on Madam C.J. Walker for 2010 because it would match up with the theme. Nancy Rooker became Mayra's sponsor for the project.
As Mayra began researching Walker, she found a controversy with Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone. The controversy was over which black woman became the first woman ever to become a millionaire. While Walker is more well-known, Malone might have been more innovative and she gave Walker her first job. Both were business women and philanthropists.
Mayra needed a partner to show both sides of the story. Vanessa agreed to help.
"We had to read a lot of books," said Vanessa. "They had already read some so I had to read those, too."
The two girls read out loud to each other. They kept journals based on what they read and what they thought was important about it.
After the research was completed, they each wrote a skit. Those two skits were then combined.
Vanessa said they had been e-mailing A'Leilia Bundles, Walker's great-great-granddaughter. They asked Bundles if they could attend a speech on Walker she was giving at IUPUI in February. Bundles had wrote a biography on Walker.
Vanessa and Mayra were invited to the speech, and also visited the Indiana State Library while down there.
Bundles told the girls to dream big, Vanessa said, and that is still with them. Bundles even signed a copy of the biography and wrote for the girls to "dream big dreams."
One of the Malagons' goals for their performance is to make more people aware of Malone, Dick Rooker said. Malone gave more to charity, was more inventive and gave Walker her first job, but Walker gets more credit, he said.
Bundles lives in Washington, D.C., said Dick Rooker, and the girls hope she will attend their presentation.
"I'm excited," said Vanessa of the upcoming national competition.
"It'll be a great time at nationals. It'll be neat to meet new people from around the world and see people from the past we met before," said Zack Rooker.
"It's really just a blast," said Mayra. "All the hard work and you get to go to nationals and do all this fun stuff."
