Congratulations, Time Travelers!

This year many of the Time Travelers chose to compete in historical competitions.  These competitions provide opportunities for learning in real world ways.  The format is typically that of project-based learning, meaning that students work to create a physical object in a real-world way.  These competitions provide authentic audiences that extend outside of our homes, families, and schools, and allow students the opportunity to showcase their work in a big way.

The first, the Tar Heel Junior Historian Competition, is a state-wide contest that allows students to compete with a variety of entries, like photography, art exhibits, magazine articles, documentaries, creative writing, and much more. Our club entered two entries in the History in Action competition, which has been postponed due to the quarantine.  We hope to learn more about the results of this event soon.

D competed individually in the Artifact Search contest with the picture below, and he was one of the winners chosen!  Congratulations, D, for your great analysis of this artifact!

Three other students competed in National History Day.  NHD is a seriously tough competition that places a heavy value on academic research and critical thinking.  Huge components of participating in this arena involve depth and variety of research and then curating your work to make it easily understandable and accessible to others.  What is NHD?  Find out more here - and if you want to know how to get started locally, please comment below!  We're happy to help however we can.

The Time Travelers begin participating in NHD at the district level. The top winners at each level advance on in the competition.  This year has been especially challenging because while most of our entries were completed before the district level competition went virtual, new rules were put in place this year to make it possible for kids to compete while not in school - and that has been challenging.  Kudos to the kids for pushing through and for the amazing state coordinator, Karen Ipock, who has made it possible to compete despite the quarantine!

L competed for the first time in NHD with an exhibit about the impact of Lewis and Clark's discoveries on their famous expedition.

Congratulations, L, for your first-place win at the Central Piedmont NHD competition for your junior individual exhibit entry!  This guy completely remade this project in a digital format for the state contest.  To look closer at his revised entry and to read his work, click here.

A competed for the first time in NHD with a historical paper about Martin Couney's work to save premature babies.  Congratulations, A, for your first-place win in the junior division at the Central Piedmont NHD competition and your win of the Primary Sources Special Award at the state level!

AB competed for the fourth time in NHD and the first time as a high school student, which moved her up to the senior division. She placed second in the senior division, historical paper category at the Central Piedmont NHD competition and first at the state level.  Congratulations, AB, for your category wins and for winning the Revolutionary War/Founding Era Special Award at the NC NHD state contest!

Because AB placed in the top two in her category at the state contest, her work advances to the national contest in mid-June.  This contest is traditionally held at the University of Maryland just outside of Washington, DC., but it is being held virtually this year.  We do not yet know what all that entails, but she is currently hard at work revising and editing her paper in order to submit it for competition at this next level.  If you'd like to read AB's state-level paper entitled "A Woman Ahead of Her Time: How Mary Katherine Goddard Defied Tyranny and Declared Independence," you can do so here.

More than half a million students compete in NHD around the world each year.  Here in NC, several thousand students compete around the state.  That number gets narrowed down to about 400 at the state level.  At the national contest in June, there are typically about 3,000 students competing from 58 affiliates globally.  2020 is the 40th year of this competition.

These students worked incredibly hard on their entries and have learned so much this year - much more than can be described in a few sentences!  These competitions provide the opportunity to build character as well as increase scholarly academic skills, and they have done both.  I am very proud of the work that these kids are doing and can't wait to see where it leads them in the future!