Stevens Students Compete in History Competition
May 20, 2010
Six Qualify for State, One Third Place Finish at State!
What began as a class assignment turned in to much more as thirty eighth grade Stevens Middle School students competed in the March regional Washington History Day contest at Olympic College. The students were required to complete research using primary sources, such as interviews, documents, letters and diaries. Six Port Angeles students qualified for the Washington State competition, and one student, Madi Bradley, moved on to place at State!
Bradley attributed her third place finish in the individual exhibit competition for Anesthesia: A New Era of Painless Surgery as the result of a lot of practice, revision and.hard work. (She finished fourth at the regional competition.) Intending to pursue a career in medicine, her research on anesthesia became personally valuable as she interviewed professionals in the medical field. Bradley had cochlear implant surgery at 20 months old. “Without surgery, and without anesthesia, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”
Saphfire Brown, who placed first in the “Historical Paper” regional competition with her study of The Impact of the Printing Press, and now, who is part of an era of e-Books and Kindle, was interested in tracing over time the evolvement of books and the written word. Although Brown was impressed the printing press was “fast, easy and reliable at that time,” she noted with amusement that e-Books and Kindle are now “fast and reliable. Now one can walk in to an Internet café and make a book!”
The team of Haley Gray and Elizabeth Stevenson placed third at regionals in “Group Documentary” for their video on Television’s Affect on History: The Vietnam War. The pair headed to the Port Angeles and Stevens’ libraries to begin their research, and hunted further for photos and film on the Internet. They interviewed a Vietnam veteran for the project. An amazing amount of work and learning all encapsulated in a ten-minute film!
Other regional place finishers in the historical paper category were Nick Lasora, who placed second with How the Modern Four Stroke has Changed Motocross, and Michael Ahrens’ The Atomic Bomb took third place. To learn more about Washington History Day, visit the Washington State Historical Society website: www.wshs.org/historyday/.