Local History Day Results

It was a long day yesterday but my 8th graders came home with three honorable mentions at the local History Day competition. None of our 6th or 7th graders placed which was disappointing, but not exactly a surprise.

The day started for me at 9AM when I arrived at school and gave the 8th graders a speech on my behavior expectations. The speech turned out to be unnecessary as my kids were far better behaved than just about every other student at the fair. (I really can't get over the number of kids allowed to chew gum and wear hats inside buildings during school-sponsored functions. I am sure I made more than one student -from other schools- mad by telling them to spit out their gum or take off their hat!) We got on the bus at 9:30 and were setting up our projects by 10:15. We had about two hours to kill once at the facility. I am not sure why the organizers thought kids would need that much time to set up a tri-fold board, but it did give them the opportunity to look at other projects and, most importantly for 13 and 14-year-olds, to check out the cute kids from other schools.

At noon we left for the high school where I had reserved a room at the career center for three hours. We had lunch and then did a Teaching Tolerance lesson on the Birmingham Children's March in the spring of 1963.  It was truly an amazing lesson and my kids learned a lot about social injustice. They also realized that even as young kids they can do something to change things in the world. Awesome.

Working away at the high school

We left the school and walked about 5 minutes down the road to the bowling alley. To my surprise, most of my kids had never been bowling before! It was so fun to watch them learn how to play. We were there for two hours; after the first hour the owners turned on the black lights and strobe lights and the kids thought that was pretty cool. Our only option for dinner was McDonald's (because we could all fit there) so we stopped and ate for an hour before heading over for the History Day interviews and awards. At this point I was fading fast but was excited to see how my kids did.

The interviewing lasted about an hour and my kids did a really nice job for the most part. We wrapped up the night with the awards and like I said in the beginning of this blog, my 8th graders did okay while my 7th graders (and the 6th graders) didn't do so hot. There were over 180 projects in total though so I think it was pretty nice to place at all. (Tyler's kids did well in the 9th grade division - but then again - his kids were only competing against each other.)

We got back to school around 8:30 and parents came promptly to pick up their kiddos. I suppose when you live in a town without a single stoplight it doesn't take long to get anywhere! I was home by 9:15 and Tyler and I spent some time debriefing the fair and the day in general. I am looking forward to taking my best projects to the state competition next weekend as this will be the ultimate culmination of our work.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Prohibition

My Lai Massacre