Birchwood Students, Alum Earn Top 10 National History Day Honors
By JOE PARRINO
5th-8th Social Studies
Dean of Teaching & Learning
School may be out but the National History Day national contest results are in! Birchwood has 10 more reasons to cheer. Ten of our students placed in the top 10 in their respective categories. That's competing against the best projects from all 50 states.
5th-8th Social Studies
Dean of Teaching & Learning
School may be out but the National History Day national contest results are in! Birchwood has 10 more reasons to cheer. Ten of our students placed in the top 10 in their respective categories. That's competing against the best projects from all 50 states.
Before we get to the Xfinity Center packed with cheering throngs, some more context can help. Twenty-one Birchwood students qualified for the national contest by placing either first or second in their category at the Ohio contest last April. They had several weeks to improve their paper, documentary, website, exhibit, or performance before the national event in College Park, Md., a suburb of the nation's capital and the home to the University of Maryland.
Birchwood's 21 qualifiers (representing 13 projects) made up about one-third of the entire Ohio delegation, counting the senior division (high school) qualifiers. Interesting to note, a good number of those senior qualifiers are Birchwood alums!
Familiar as the faces in our delegation were, everyone immediately noticed the legion of unfamiliar faces arriving at College Park for registration. Nearly 3,000 students in all attended the event, often sporting the T-shirt of their state, U.S. territory or international school in Europe and Asia. The ice was easily broken as students sought each other out to trade their state/territory-specific button, a tradition designed to display the unity in diversity that characterizes National History Day.
During the days of judging, each of our students shined, enjoying the rewards of fine tuning a project for most of a school year. Due to the sheer numbers, each category could require up to10 judging rooms, each with up to 10 projects. Only the top project from each room advanced to the final round of judging which was held on the succeeding day.
That's why it is remarkable that four Birchwood projects advanced to the final round. Those finalists and their ultimate place ranking are as follows:
Group Performance
Yianni Gountis, Corrado Naples, Nathan Thomas, 2nd place
Ginny Bardwell, Saira Kakumanu, Pearl Zhu, 8th place
Group Exhibit
Samuel Chen, Jerry Jiang, 4th place
Group Website
Niko Constaninou, Noah DeLuca, 8th place
And the highlights roll on...
Samuel and Jerry also won a special award for Untold Stories in U.S. History, marking the first time a Birchwood project has received this recognition.
Yianni, Corrado, and Nathan's group performance was mentioned in a New York Times article.
Omar Elbadawy, Birchwood class of 2022 and a rising senior at Hawken Upper School, won second place in the Senior Division for his Historical Paper.
Joshua Chen and Joshua Gordon, Birchwood class of 2023, and Joshua Thomas, Birchwood class of 2024 together submitted a documentary that was selected for a prestigious showcase at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History. All three attend St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland.
Anyone who watched History Day parade around the Xfinity Center where the University of Maryland basketball teams play and where the awards ceremony was held, would understand how much this competition means to them.
And if the youth from 50 states can continue to rally around one arena in celebration of our shared history, then the future of this country is one we can all be proud to leave to them.
For full contest results and videos from the five-day National History Day finals: CLICK HERE.
