History Day(s)

I hope everyone enjoyed the Library of Congress workshop on the 2nd!  It was great to meet this year's teachers and I look forward to getting to know you better.  In June, you'll have the chance to discover resources in the Pennsylvania State Archives, State Museum of Pennsylvania, and the National Archives (at its Philadelphia location and online).

I spent much of Friday and Saturday judging at the National History Day in Pennsylvania contest.  Crazy as work and grad school is, I do my best to take time to judge.  This year I'll have covered all four levels - a local school contest, regional, state and national.  I get inspired every year by seeing the enthusiasm of all these students for history.

This year's NHD theme is "Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History".  Students don't have to connect to all of them, but do need to make a connection to some part of the theme.  It's always interesting to see how they do that.  Just to name a few topics I've seen this year - the birth control pill as revolution; Henry Ford's industrial revolution in creating the moving assembly line; Martin Luther, Prohibition, Tianamen Square, the 1971 Titans football team from Alexandria VA; the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society; Kent State; the Christiana Riots; Title IX.  It was wonderful that there was no overwhelming trend in topics this year (after the year where I judged 7 documentaries on the Navajo Code Talkers). 

It also shows that there are interesting stories everywhere.  We've done a better job in the last 30 years of acknowledging that history isn't about dead, often rich, white men.  We still have work to do to make sure that history is about all people, rather than relegating women, people of color, servants, and others to sidebars. 

While the focus of this year's program is the American Revolution and Constitution period, I think we'll be able to dig around a bit to find the people behind the men in Philadelphia and Valley Forge!