Middle school students at The Rhoades School excel at National History Day-California competition

Middle school students at The Rhoades School in Encinitas recently participated in the National History Day – California competition at the regional and state level. Twenty-eight Rhoades School eighth graders participated in the regional National History Day competition in San Diego, with four students reaching the state finals in Sacramento.

The National History Day competition is held each spring and welcomes more than 1,500 students from across California to present a project about a historical topic that they are passionate about. To participate, students conduct research about their topic, analyze and interpret their findings, draw conclusions about the significance in history, and create final projects that are evaluated by historians and educators. For the competition’s theme of “Debate and Diplomacy,” Rhoades School students chose projects ranging from Japanese cultural diplomacy to the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment and presented their final projects through documentaries, websites and other exhibits.

Rhoades School finalists from the state competition were Heather Crean and Ahana Singh for their exhibit “Debate and Diplomatic Failure Between Great Britain and the American Colonies”; Oona Norvell for her documentary titled “Finding New Rhythms: How Jazz Musicians Defied Racial and Musical Norms”; and Sonali Sharma for her documentary titled “The Debate Over Food Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century: Policy or Poison?”