W
of a video may take hours to complete! It is also because after
exams they go right into their English research papers, so I
have to wait until those are done before we can resume NHD
work. At that point they often make significant revisions to
their projects, as well as complete the annotations and the
process paper.
Lessons Learned
G
e first began work with NHD during the 2001-02 school year. Many of the same principles that are true for other
projects at our school work for NHD. For any long-term project, structure is critical. We try to break down each week
so that it has specific goals that students must meet. If they don’t, they stay after school to work until they have
met them. While we can’t guarantee success for our students, we have learned that by breaking large tasks into smaller pieces,
holding students to interim deadlines so that problems do not snowball, providing support where they genuinely need it, and
having resources available that they are able to work with, we greatly improve their chances for success.
Why NHD?
iven the challenges these students face and the large
amount of time that we dedicate to NHD projects,
“Why?” seems like an apt question. Every time our
faculty discusses twenty-first century skills and how to infuse
them into our curriculum, NHD comes to mind, at least for us.
Creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication,
global citizenship, digital literacy—you name it and NHD
We went into this endeavor determined to appreciate small
triumphs. It was eight years before we had a student advance
to Nationals, but our goal has always been the journey, not a
medal at the finish line.
fosters it. Our students get excited about their topics, and
while there are certainly frustrating moments, the pride they
feel when they meet a challenge is wondrous indeed. Seeing
our bright students competing with their intellectual peers
warms our hearts as teachers—corny but true!
Here is one student’s story. A few years ago, one of our high
school students was faced with creating an NHD project.
Though this young man had been at our school for three
years, he had thus far shown virtually no interest in school,
despite his abilities and the determined efforts of his teachers.
He partnered up with another student, and they decided on
a topic they were both interested in, also opting to create
a documentary, which built on this young man’s recently
developed skill of movie making. As crunch time for their
documentary approached, he reported to me that his mother
was a little upset about why his light was still on after “lights
out.” He had been telling her, “But mom, I’m working on my
movie!” She was so surprised to see he was that involved with
a school project that she let it go. He and his partner placed
first in our region, second in the state, and went on to the
National Contest with great fanfare.
NATIONAL HISTORY DAY 2015
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