Students from the Georgia College Early College (GCEC) explored a variety of topics throughout history to prepare for the National History Day Competition.
Teachers Yi’Sheika Lawrence, Zachary Balkcom, Dennis Holsey, and Sylvester Clark planned to participate in National History Day, during Georgia College Early College’s Summer Retreat. The history teachers planned to use the project-based learning opportunity for both middle and high school GCEC students.
Lawrence assisted 24 ninth-grade students in her class to prepare for the competition. Twenty-three of her students were from Baldwin County and one student was from Putnam County. All of her students completed projects that were judged at the school-wide competition on Feb. 22 and submitted to the regional competition on March 2.
“Once we registered as teachers, the competition sent us a handbook of rules to follow. We followed the rules of the handbook and then teachers had the autonomy to specify further what they wanted their class to do,” said Lawrence. “Our school-wide competition also was conducted the same way as the regional competition.”
While each class that was involved had a slightly different curriculum based on the teacher’s preference, Lawrence allowed her students to choose their topics. Each of her students had about one month to prepare their projects and she worked with them after school as needed.
“My students were able to choose their topics, created a 25-page annotated bibliography, wrote summaries and analyses of each article for it, and for the competition they had to work that research down into two sentences,” said Lawrence. “Ultimately they are trying to connect the primary and secondary sources to their thesis statement, so students have to find the relevance in the research and how it connects back to what they are trying to present to others.”
Students turned in their projects as exhibits, documentaries, essays, presentations, or a website.
While all of her students submitted their projects to the regional competition, Putnam County High School ninth grader Yasmin Farley was the only one to attend. She placed first in the senior division with her project on the Black Death.
“She looked at the economic and social hierarchy of the Black Death and its effects,” said Lawrence. “It (regional competition) was in the midst of state playoffs and other activities, so all the students backed out at the last minute. But she came and took first place.”
According to Lawrence, students had to adjust from formatting their research in MLA style to Chicago Style. So while learning their topics, they were also learning a new formatting of writing and how to present a variety of different types of presentations.
“Just learning Chicago Style was a whole new mountain to climb by itself,” said Lawrence. “I’m extremely proud of all of my students for completing their projects and submitting them for competition. For them to do something historically, that’s a new level of thinking that my kids aren’t used to thinking about.”
Lawrence stated that history is a topic often overlooked and overshadowed. That was why she and Balkom wanted to find a competition and project-based learning opportunity to enrich the students’ experiences.
“That’s why I push them so hard to explore new avenues and challenges. History is often overlooked and in modern-day education, history is the last subject,” said Lawrence.
Yasmin will be attending the state competition in Lagrange on April 20 along with other GCEC students who placed at the regional competition. While Lawrence’s class is only one example of students who participated, each class worked hard and diligently to do similar work for this new project-based learning endeavor.