History Competitions for the Masses: Mr. Moore and National History Day

Around late January to early February, students may pass a wall displaying almost a dozen trifold boards as they walk to the third-to-five floor escalator. These are products of National History Day (NHD), a history competition hundreds of Stuyvesant students participate in every year. From the moment they began to when they won national awards, these projects were and continue to be shaped by the guidance of AP U.S. History and AP European History teacher Mordercai Moore.

NHD is a national competition that tasks students with creating detailed research projects. Each year, the competition has a different theme. This year, it is “Rights and Responsibilities in History.” Students can present their research in various ways. “The projects are in five categories—historical paper, exhibit, performance, website and documentary. All but the historical paper can be individual or a group of up to five students,” Moore explained.

National History Day offers students great freedom; they can personalize their research in a way that best suits them. “We did an exhibit our first year, but we realized that maybe doing an exhibit was not going to be the best idea for us. We ended up choosing a documentary [the second year] because I love watching video essays on YouTube. I could replicate them for NHD,” senior and second place winner in the Group Documentary category Jared Lee said. The competition’s broad themes also offer great liberty. “If you’re super keen on a certain historical topic, NHD offers you the opportunity to explore that more because it’s not binding you to any sort of topic,” Lee added.

Completing a National History Day project is a demanding commitment. Students progress through four rounds of qualification. “There’s Stuy History Day in January; there is New York City History Day in March; there is New York State History Day in April; in early June, there is National History Day in College Park, Maryland,” Moore described. Thus, for a winning project, National History Day is a full school year commitment. 

With each round, winning teams rework large portions of their projects based on judges’ feedback. “One of our judges at either the city or the state level gave the feedback that they would have liked to see both perspectives of phasing out the use of CFCs. Okay, we thought, where can we find any information on this? I found a book, I went to the 34th Street Library, and we found out that there were members of the Reagan administration who said that the ozone hole was essentially fake news. We ended up cutting a minute of our 10 minute video to add that in,” Lee said. 

The vast majority of Stuyvesant students participating in NHD do so with direct help from Moore. “Right now we have 160 students who are participating in History Day, and we have 93 projects and 63 topics. About 75 to 80 percent are from my classes,” Moore described. After all, National History Day plays a central role in Moore’s AP US History and AP European History classes. “What is mandatory in my AP classes is that students participate in one significant research project. They are given the choice of three projects: one in the fall, which is History Day and then one of two in the spring, either creating a historical newspaper on a given year with a group of four students or co-teaching a 41 minute class with two other students,” he stated.

Many of Moore’s students find National History Day the most interesting of the three projects they are offered. “It sounded far more fun than the historical newspaper because of the variety of mediums. Plus, I had shimmied my way into a nice team with good friends, and we were all more interested in going deep on a specific topic instead of trying to form a snapshot of a specific year for the newspaper,” former AP Euro student and current senior David Chen said.

Although Moore’s students work on their NHD projects outside of class, Moore provides detailed resources in class to help students with the competition throughout the year. “I spend a significant amount of time on the first five days of the school year going over the requirements of History Day. Throughout the year, I have on my Google Classroom, for all my classes, a section devoted to History Day material. As well, for instance, last week I gave each student a packet specific to their category, which tells them the steps they need to take for the rough draft and the final draft. Those are given well in advance,” Moore said.

Of course, one doesn’t have to be Moore’s student to participate in History Day. “Students who are not in my classes usually have some connection to me. Often it is that they were my former students from either their sophomore or junior years,” Moore said. 

Year-round, Moore helps all students who are participating in the competition at an afterschool club. “Twice a week, students can drop by after school pretty much any day except Thursday, when I tutor AP Euro after school. I’ve also set up a program where students this year can work with [History Day] alums from the previous year,” Moore said.

Moore and his student teacher Megan McReynolds also provide feedback for each student’s project drafts as the semester progresses. “There are a total of six deadlines for annotated citations, and they’re based on each of the different parts of the project—the story, background, build up, short term effects, and long term effects. In essence, students have to submit a minimum of three annotated sources from each part of the project so they’re not neglecting any one part. The last deadline—I want them to focus on visual sources. And so Ms. McReynolds, along with me, is constantly giving some feedback on their progress,” Moore said.

Additionally, Moore personally works with school administration to host Stuy History Day, giving all students the opportunity to present their hard work. The event also helps Moore pick which projects to submit to the competition. “In every category, schools can submit a total of six projects—three individuals and three groups. So we need to decide which [projects] are going to advance,” Moore said. 

Moore has been a proponent of National History Day for almost two decades. “I was involved as an advisor at my previous school, the High School of Economics and Finance, where I brought History Day, sometime about 2007 or 2008, with some success,” Moore said. He later carried his expertise with him to Stuyvesant. “When I came to Stuy, [the school] already had a history of success with History Day through [history teacher Robert] Sandler. The second year after the school reopened after the pandemic, both of us were advisors for the History Day competition, and that was very successful,” he explained. Currently, only Moore works on NHD. 

Moore is so invested in National History Day, because it is an unrivaled opportunity for Stuyvesant students who are interested in history. “I think doing History Day is a great opportunity to do college-level research on a topic that you are excited and passionate about in a format that you have potentially some real skill in doing, whether it’s performance or website development or documentary making or writing a historical paper,” Moore said. “For many students who’ve done this, especially the ones who’ve won at the Stuy or New York City or state or national levels, it becomes a real turning point in their four-year Stuy experience.” 

For Moore, guiding students through the National History Day process is a passion project. “It’s like teaching a sixth class,” Moore said. “If I didn’t love History Day and the process, I wouldn’t do it.” 

Indeed, despite National History Day’s intensity, students in his class still feel well-supported throughout the process. “He does a really good job of giving students the resources to make excellent projects, and it’s all about their effort and their passion behind their topics. Whether or not their project is going to go far, he does a really good job of supporting students. Even though it might be a daunting project, it's not so scary because you have the support of the community of National History Day [participants],” McReynolds said. 

In fact, many students grow to find the research process rewarding. “It’s a sort of never-ending treasure hunt. Once you find one primary source, you can branch out and keep finding more. What we did for the two months [of November and December] is see how much we could really find about our topic,” Lee said.

Moore even stays in touch with students that have participated in National History Day in years past, personally encouraging them to submit to the contest again. “He was very encouraging of my group to try again for NHD. I personally dropped out of the team because I saw that junior year was going to be rough—and it was—but he ended up contacting me, specifically, instead for an advisory role because he remembered my skills—e.g. tips on websites, video editing/processing,” Chen said. Years later, former Moore students continue getting emails via Jupiter.

Though participating in National History Day can be intense, the competition’s rigor and freedom provides students with an unforgettable research experience. At Stuyvesant, Moore is the gateway to making that experience reachable for students. “NHD is so accessible if you have Moore that it allows you to research history on a serious level, even if you’re not a history person,” Lee said. Moore’s dedication and support reflects in the caliber of his students’ projects.