Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 9, 1990 TAG: 9006110296
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Long
W.R. Johnston, Giles history and government teacher, says county students have a history of performing well during History Day competition. Last year, the senior media group placed third in the nation. And three members of that team will be returning to the national competition this year.
Before working with Giles High School History Day teams for the past four years, Johnston helped with a junior competition at Narrows Elementary School for four years. Over those eight years, a Giles team has won at least first or second place at the state level.
This year, the two Giles teams of five students were winners at the state History Day competition May 12. The teams advanced to the state competition after winning at the regional level at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke in April.
Each year, students must adapt their topic to a history theme. This year's topic was "Science and Technology in History." The Giles teams decided to address nuclear energy in their categories.
History Day competitions started at Case Western University in Cleveland in 1973, Johnston said, and have gradually grown to include every state.
The competition provides "a means of getting students interested in history," as well as helping to hone academic, research, interviewing and writing skills, he said.
Categories include a research START JUMP TYPE HERE START JUMP TYPE HERE
paper, individual or group project, individual or group presentation and individual or group performance.
Placing first in the senior group media category were: Kim Kessinger, Stephen Medley, Steve Walker, Shelley Young and Brian Pfister. Using a multislide projector medium, the group addressed the topic "Nuclear Energy - Creation, Destruction and Change."
Placing second in senior group performance category were Chris Shaver, Ginny Guthrie, Joe Coffey, Michele Huffman and Rony Masri. Their stage performance was titled "All in the Nuclear Family."
Johnston said most schools are now using videos in the media competition, but Giles High has stuck to a slide-projector format. This year, the group used four slide banks on three screens to show their project.
Besides writing scripts for both presentations and doing set designs for the stage performance, the groups also had to support their work with a bibliography of historical fact. The Giles media group impressed the judges with a 30-page bibliography, Johnston said.
One of the challenges of the presentations is to have "a wealth of accurate historical information in the presentation but at the same time make it interesting and entertaining."
With the help of an uncle, Johnston was able to take the 10 students to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to talk with employees of Oak Ridge Laboratories, where the materials for the first atomic bomb were made.
The students toured the facilities and talked to long-term employees who told them all about the development of Oak Ridge in the 1940s and what went on while the bomb materials were being processed at the plant.
Through the research they conducted in Oak Ridge, the performance group tried to show how nuclear energy affected an individual family, using Johnston's family as a model.
Besides having an uncle who worked at Oak Ridge, lives of other relatives were affected by nuclear energy. One relative was going into nuclear medicine, and another had used the "atomic cocktail" to help relieve a thyroid condition.
"I believe [nuclear power] really has changed the world more than any other scientific event," said Rony Masri, a junior and member of the performance team.
The 10-minute stage play begins with a student telling her family she doesn't know what to put into a research paper she's writing about nuclear energy. The family sits down and tells the student how it's affected their lives, using a painted backdrop to illustrate a flashback to the Enola Gay dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.
Masri's no stranger to acting - he's a member of the high school Drama Club, but he said preparing for the national competition does make him a little nervous.
The media presentation focused on the development of Oak Ridge, the destruction of Japan and changes in the world since since the inception of nuclear energy.
The slide presentation focuses on scientific research, President Truman's decision process in using the bomb, as well as the dropping of the two bombs in Japan and the subsequent destruction.
Brian Pfister, a member of the media team, said he had a natural interest in the topic because he's a World War II buff. Through his work with the team, he learned more detailed information about the bombs. "I learned a lot. I didn't know about the first nuclear bomb at Trinity Test Site [in New Mexico]."
Being part of a first-place team at state was surprising to Pfister, given that he was a junior in his first year with the project. And, he said, there was stiff competition from other schools whose topics ranged from railroads and the Civil War to space exploration.
The Giles High School History Club holds fund-raising projects to pay for the expenses of competing in History Day events, which include the purchase of audio-visual equipment. In the past, the club has tried everything from "selling onions to car washes to doughnuts to pizza," Johnston said.
Fund raising by high-school clubs was limited this year, and Johnston said that by mid-May the club had only two-thirds of the money members needed to go to national competition. "We'd love to have a corporate sponsor," he said.
by CNB