History Day

YaYa worked super duper hard on her history day project.  All the seventh graders at her school do a history day project.  They can write a research paper, create a display exhibit about their topic, write and perform a performance, design a website, or make a documentary.  Then they create an annotated bibliography and write a process paper about the decisions they make creating their project.  YaYa chose to make a website.  It was a lot of work.  A LOT.  Even though she was totally on top of the research, the process of combining the information and designing the website was arduous. Several nights  she was up until midnight working on the history day project and making revisions.  I am a night owl and I’m often up until midnight.  I’m not used to distressed children staying up until midnight with me.

YaYa’s website is about Margaret Phelan Taylor, who was one of the WASP pilots in World War II.  It talks about the legacy Taylor and the other WASP pilots left for women who work in aviation today.

Because of all that hard work, YaYa’s project was chosen as one of the projects from her school to go to regionals, so yesterday I drove her to UMD, where she met with a judge for an interview about her website.  Although she was (ahem) a bit anxious, that went well too.

I didn’t really know what history day was until I checked YaYa in at the regional competition.  I really just knew that it was a LOT of work.   Seeing all the projects and kids yesterday kind of jazzed me up!  It was kind of like an English teacher’s dream, even though the topics were all about history.  (Actually English Language Arts and history go very well together and I used to to collaborative projects with the history teacher when I was teaching English).  These projects require a lot of students:  concise, informative writing; annotated bibliographies, presentation and interview skills, graphic design skills, and library research skills.  Seriously, they learn so much by doing these projects.  I kind of felt like I was ready to send YaYa off to college upon completing hers.  (Except that she was having a lot of stress navigating a college campus on history day).    Watching the kids and their projects made me want to jump back into teaching secondary students.  In fact, it kind of made me want to zip back to my teenage years and just join in the competition so I could purchase the red T-shirt that had a pair of glasses on it and said, “Geek Out!  Minnesota History Day.”  I really wanted one of those T-shirts.  I might campaign to be a history day judge next year so I can get a T-shirt.

I wanted to bring my camera to history day.  YaYa said absolutely no pictures.  The only way I was going to be able to take a picture of her was if she qualified for state.  She was convinced that would not be the case.  I had an inkling that it might happen.

It turns out I got to take a pictures after all.  (Although not until we got home).  The website and its creator are heading to state.

Even the history day people in charge of the event know that the projects are a lot of hard work.  The lady announcing the state qualifiers stated “If you are not called up to this stage today, the great thing is . . . you are DONE with your history day project!”  The daunting revision process heading toward all the state qualifiers gets a two thumbs down from YaYa.

Still, its very exciting.  YaYa thought the medals would be better if they tasted like caramel.  Of course this girl wouldn’t cooperate for some pictures with out a lot of silliness.