I am Lisa Adeli, a World History teacher at Buena High School, and my students are very excited about National History Day! In fact, some of the students are so serious about competing that they drove all the way to Tucson to compete (since we had over 100 high school entries at the Sierra Vista regional). Buena High School had 20 (!) state winners, and more than half of those originally competed at the Tucson regional. I'll tell you a little about some of the Tucson competitors.
One group: Shawn, Elora, and Leah, have a Group Documentary called "The Women's Suffragist Movement in Wartime America." It will be Shawn's and Elora's 3rd time competing at the national finals - but alas, they are seniors - though their new teammate, Leah, is a freshman. The three of them frequently drive to Tucson to use the U of A library, but they think they work best in the middle of the night, so last night they were working until 3:30 a.m. at my house. (I'm Shawn's mother.) Leah sleepily told me this morning that she thinks their bibliography is 25 pages, and their documentary really rocks. (Shawn is an amazing filmmaker, which is good because that is what he is majoring in next year at the university.)
Another group - Andrew, Sarah, Brittany, Mary, and Jamie - is doing a performance on the Sobibor concentration camp revolt. (They were at my house yesterday - during DAYLIGHT hours!) They have a passionate performance on that concentration camp revolt and have also been expanding their research base to include materials on other concentration camp uprisings to provide a comparative perspective. Lauren, Shelby, and Teena - Arizona's other winning Group Performance team - has also worked a lot on their bibliography. Their performance is on Socrates and how his open-minded way of thinking challenges us today.
Alexis, one of the two Individual Documentary winners, also competed in Tucson. She has researched RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan). I believe that Joe and Yicheng, with a Website on the Viet Minh, competed in Tucson as well.
Anyway, this is truly a life-changing thing for many of these kids, which is why some of them put in many, many hours of research on their own time - and during the summer. It's also why some of them compete for several years. The other reason, of course, is that we always have a wonderful time in the Washington D.C. area - although the school district would like it better if we had brought in a few thousand dollars more in tax credit donations to pay for it!!
So watch out for news of our great adventures in D.C. -with 20 kids, 2 official chaperons, a ****** of parents and siblings, it should be amazing!