TORRINGTON – Excitement filled the gym at Torrington Middle School on Monday as students from the sixth, seventh and eighth grades found their seats for the assembly being held to announce the outcome of the National History Day Regional Competition. The theme for this year’s event was Conflict and Compromise.
From the original 46 students and 27 projects presented at the local level, 22 projects had advanced to the state regional competition. From those, three TMS projects put together by five students earned a trip to the National History Day finals, to be held in Washington D.C. on June 10.
Students Carleigh Dugger and Klacie Groene: The Yellowstone River Compact of 1950; Allison Brummell and Chase Milles: Girls Can Play Too! The Effects of Title IX, and; Bethany Wunibald: Nellie Bly The Conflict and Compromise of Women in Journalism, all earned State Runner-Up honors for their projects and qualified for Nationals.
Starting in September, tudents picked a subject and a presentation method, with the help of Social Study Teacher Mr. Stephen Hart, who introduced the National History Competition to TMS after attending a social study conference in Casper.
“I thought this looks pretty cool,” Hart said. “This is the fourth year at Torrington Middle School. Myself, Mrs. Perkins our Librarian and media specialist and Mr. Burrill our sixth grade Social Study Teacher, the three of us help each other with all these projects. We have sixth through eighth graders doing all these projects.”
The students continued attention and desire to compete for their chance to attend the National competition is incredible, Perkins said.
“Probably one of the most impressive things – these students complete,” she said. “Every project has to do a process paper and an annotative bibliography and use MLA and APA format. For sixth seventh and eighth graders to gather a bibliography with 40 plus sources it is pretty incredible.”
Bethany Wunibald said her own background helped with her project on Nellie Bly. Wunibald’s method was individual performance.
“I am pretty use to performing in front of people so it was not that scary, but before my performance I was nervous,” Wunibald said. “She was one of the first undercover reporters that was a woman.”
Carleigh Dugger and Klacie Groene selected their project because of the area they are from, an agricultural area. Their project was the development of a web site, which can be found at http://42393350.nhd.weebly.com/.
“It was fun to compete and to be around people,” they said. “To see what other people think of the theme, Conflict and Compromise, and how they relate to it. It is interesting.”
Allison Brummell and Chase Milles tackled what could be considered a highly controversial action that affected both women and men, but showed a high level of Conflict and
Compromise.
Brummell said, “We focused our project on sports because it had a big impact on sports.”
Milles found it to be a personal project for both Brummel and him.
“It related to our lives I play for the Wyoming soccer team,” Milles said. “Because of Title IX, the College here, it does not have a boy’s soccer team, so I couldn’t play. They have a girl’s team, just not a boy’s team.”
Brummell said: “It made it so that men and women have to be equal. The Colleges and High Schools had to Compromise. We also picked it because it related to my life. Now I can play a lot more sports, I have a more opportunities.”
Milles said, “This is why our board works so well because there is two different perspectives, If you had a girl and a girl it just shows one side of the story. If you have a girl and a boy you see both sides.”
Other students who placed and won awards at the Regional Competition
Historical Paper:
Tyne Stokes: The Treaty of Versailles: The Compromise That Was Not. (Top Four)
Trisha Cates: Ho Poe Kaw: “May Our People Recover and Thrive” (Top Four)
Special Awards:
William H. Barton Award: $100 for the best use of oral history in an entry.
Trisha Cates: Ho Poe Kaw: “May Our People Recover and Thrive”
American Heritage Center Native American Heritage Award: $100 for the best entry dealing with a cultural or historical perspective about indigenous populations in North America.
Adria Derby, Olivia Judkins: Chief Joseph: A Tale of Friendship, Tragedy, and Broken
Promises
For more information about the National History Day competition, go to www.nhd.org
