National History Day is a year-long program which requires Arizona students in grades 4-12 to do in-DEPTH research about a "historical" topic (note the quotation marks--because it can be anything that interests them from cartoons to baseball to beheadings). The point is that most of our educational system is about learning a little bit about a lot of things--NHD is about learning a lot about one topic. Students prove how much they have learned by creating an entry in a format they like--a poster, documentary, website, exhibit, historical paper, or performance. They can work in a team or alone.

In all my years as a parent, teacher, judge and cordinator, I have heard hundreds of students say that this is the FIRST time they've liked history. It makes it real. That is the point.