Stuyvesant Holds History Day Celebration

Stuyvesant’s History Day Award Ceremony was held for National History Day (NHD) participants in Lecture Hall A on January 30. The ceremony included performances, presentations, and documentaries created by AP U.S. History and AP European History teacher Mordercai Moore’s students, with this year’s theme being “Rights & Responsibilities in History.” The ceremony honored the top three contestants in the categories of group and individual documentaries, research papers, performances, exhibits, and websites, and awarded other outstanding non-advancing projects. The winning projects—along with advancing to the city-level competition for NHD on March 3—were given a Certificate of Award and a free family admission pass to the Museum of the City of New York.

NHD is a competition for students in grades 6-12, in which they conduct in-depth historical research on a chosen subject by using sources such as libraries, archives, and museums. Afterwards, students present their findings through a variety of media: research papers, exhibits, performances, documentaries, or websites. 

Moore decided to grade his students’ NHD participation because of the competition’s educational value and the skills built by NHD projects. “[The competition] combines [students’ abilities] to develop college-level analytical thinking skills and to do college-level research, with the freedom to pick topics that are of interest to them,” Moore said. “It allows students to do research in ways they may have thought were not possible given that they’re high school students, but they discovered that they are able to conduct it just like historians do.”

Junior Anoushka Knowles’s documentary on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was commended and displayed at the beginning of the award ceremony. She described the process as lengthy but thorough. “The journey creating it was definitely a long one. I decided on my topic in September, and from then until late October, I collected sources each week. In early December, we had a rough draft due. For every category, this rough draft is slightly different, but everyone was required to submit a process paper, title page, and annotated bibliography—all things that also needed to be submitted for the final product.” Knowles said.

Some students, like sophomore Erica You, faced hurdles while conducting their research. You created a website on birth control rights pioneer Margaret Sanger. “Research definitely took up the most time for the project, but the hardest part of the project was trying to find different perspectives,” You said. 

Another struggle was ensuring historical accuracy while exhibiting artistic creativity. Individual performance winner and sophomore Milan Gittens acted out a scene about the television series Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. “The hardest part was staying factual while writing the script. I ended up revising and editing up until the day of [my performance] to ensure my audience was not only entertained but also well-informed,” Gittens said. 

NHD fostered collaboration between students and allowed them to choose meaningful events that were rooted in rich histories—sometimes in New York City history.  Students learned about events from various communities, such as the Chinatown Garment Worker strike. “A few of our members had connections to a relative who actually worked in the garment industry. It was a very personal and a pretty significant topic for us,” sophomore and third place winner in the Group Performance category Weifen Chen said.

Participating in NHD was also a gateway for students to try something new. Sophomore Tiffany Xu earned second place for Group Performance for her work on the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. “I wanted to go out of my comfort zone for this project. That’s why I chose a performance—because I’m not really a speaker or an actor,” Xu said. 

Ultimately, attendees deemed the award ceremony a success. “I thought it was a great experience to have my work publicly shared, and I’m very grateful to Mr. Moore for organizing it. I also enjoyed hearing from previous NHD winners; they said really meaningful things about the value of historical research and the opportunities NHD provides for students to explore and express their passions,” Knowles said.

For potential participants in future years, Moore highly encourages embarking on this research opportunity if students possess a strong interest. “I would say students should do NHD if they are passionate about a topic for a subject and are willing to make a time investment in it, because it’s not an undertaking to be done lightly,” Moore said. “This is a great opportunity to really dive deep into one piece of world, national, or local history!”