D.C. Everest has participated in the
National History Day Program for the past twenty years. This program promotes good educational practice in social studies classrooms. Students choose a topic related to an annual theme and become "historians" as they research the topic. Students learn history content but also learn many life skills that go along with researching and participating in the history fair and contests. Over the past five years the state of Wisconsin has worked hard at getting more and more students involved in this excellent program. Their website at
Wisconsin National History Day is an excellent resource for teachers. The two students shown above researched the Scopes Monkey Trial. As part of their research conducted many interviews and even visited Dayton, Tennessee. The girls made it to the national competition in Maryland and were finalists (top fourteen). Visit our website for more information on this exciting program.
D.C. Everest History Day.
History Day
Experiences
by Rebecca Jirik and
Karina Jirik
The summer of 2012, we were lucky
enough to travel to Washington, D.C. to participate in the National History Day
Competition for our group performance about the Scopes “Monkey Trial”. A great experience, it took a lot of hard
work and looking for multiple sources in order to succeed, but we would
recommend this great event to everyone.
History can really open peoples’ world and help them understand
themselves. History Day also makes
people who participate in it better researchers and prepare them for a college
education.
When we were in Washington, D. C.
we had the chance to meet people from the United States and all of the other
countries/affiliations that participate in National History Day. One of our highlights of NHD was the button
trading with the other people. We almost
got all of the other states buttons. We
also enjoyed all of the sightseeing that is available in D.C. Seeing the Washington, Lincoln, WWII memorials,
and Arlington Cemetery were our favorite destinations. It was also fun to meet new people and look
at other presentations and exhibits. We
were really anxious to see if our names would be on the callback list, to see
if we made it to the final round. We
were so nervous we didn’t believe that we had made it and had to take a picture
of the list to make sure we weren’t imagining it! You have to work hard,
persevere, and go with the flow. We
definitely had to go with the flow in Washington, D. C. because our set fell down
in the middle of our last performance!
We had a wonderful time at National
History Day. We even made it to finals
in Nationals, which means that we are in the top 14 in the country. History day was very fun, and we are so glad
we did it. It is funny to think that we
didn’t even want to compete in the first place!
This past fall the D.C. Everest Oral History Project completed its 20th book entitled Wisconsin Women: Celebrating Their Contributions The contains over 90 interviews with Wisconsin Women from a variety of different of different fields. The student editors stated that themes such as fighting for rights for women and resilience came out repeatedly as they interviewed people. Students conducted the interviews through their 8th grade history classes and 10th grade seminar classes. The students then transcribed and edited the interviews. Students in our Oral History Project after school club then used the desktop publishing program Quark to get the interviews ready for publishing. Students put in many long and hard hours putting pictures into the interviews, pulling out quotes to be highlighted, making phone calls to get missing information and many other publishing jobs. Most of the interviews can also be found on the D.C. Everest website. Once the book was published a book reception was held and the Grand Theater's Great Hall in Wausau. We were fortunate to have Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson give an outstanding presentation about the struggles Wisconsin Women have faced throughout Wisconsin's History.
