national history day 2015 - prepare now

[Anonymous]

Do you know if they allow schools outside of LA to participate? I would love to try and participate in this if they do allow other counties to have entries too.

[clay dube]

History Day L.A.
2015 Theme: Leadership & Legacy in History
Saturday, March 14, 2015

Azusa Pacific University
701 East Foothill Blvd.
Azusa, CA 91702

The 35th Annual History Day L.A. will be held on Saturday, March 14, 2015 at Azusa Pacific University, located at 701 East Foothill Blvd., Azusa, CA 91702-7000.
The theme for 2015 is Leadership & Legacy in History

History Day L.A. is part of a national program that encourages students to prepare posters, exhibits, papers, websites, performances, and documentary presentations on a historical theme. These projects will be judged by community members and social science professionals. Participation in History Day L.A. provides opportunities for students to meet content standards and improve academic achievement. As an authentic performance assessment measure, teachers can utilize History Day projects to easily assess the knowledge and skills of their students.

Students, teachers, and parents attending History Day L.A. on March 14, 2015 will have a chance to view student posters, exhibits, historical performances and documentaries, attend the Awards ceremony, and tour Azusa Pacific University.

All registration materials and information for History Day L.A. can be found and downloaded at our
History Day L.A. Website:
http://historydayla.lacoe.edu

The national history day themebook is available here. It includes (pp. 7-8) sample topics. A richer list of topics is here. Mao and Gandhi are on the cover of the themebook, but Asia is largely neglected in the sample topic list. Confucianism and the first emperor's terracota army are included, but much more is possible. For example, what about leadership and infrastructure (China's great wall and grand canal), democratization (Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui in Taiwan), economic development (Akio Morita and Sony), and much more. Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and most of Asia is neglected. Ashoka (India and law....). You could have Prince Shotoku in 6th century Japan, Admiral Yi in 16th century Korea, Sun Yat-sen in 19-20th century China, and Aung San Suu Kyi in 20-21st century Myanmar. And we've not even thought about the role of science and art.

Great things are possible: here's a local team that went to the national competition last year. They focused on Executive Order 9066.
In 2014, Sylvia Wang was a runner up at the elementary level with a project on the cultural revolution in China. Omar Reyes was a junior level winner with a project on the relocation of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. Abby Barber worked on whaling and received an honorable mention award. The Japanese internment also was the focus of the top junior level group projects and documentary efforts. Ben Vadehra and Eashan Sharma worked on Gandhi and earned honorable mention at the senior level. Megan Ford was first alternate with her project on Apple and Chinese workers. Travis Sosa won for senior documentary on Japan's postwar environmental problems. Students from Agoura High won the group project with work on the 1984 Bhopal tragedy. Another Agoura group won for top website with a project on new imperialism in India.

Please do let us know if you join the History Day effort, especially if your students elect to work on an Asia-related topic.

[Anonymous]

My 7th and 8th graders did projects that I submitted to the district competition in January. I was a judge at the district and county level. Now that you mention it, not one project for our district had anything to do with Asian history. That is something for me to think about for next year.

[Author]

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