Peters Township students head to state National History Day competition
McMurray Elementary School sixth-graders Alexa Farinelli, left, and Anne Chang tell about the life and death of Korea’s Empress Myeongseong.
Discussing their video about Elizabeth Cady Stanton are, from left, Graden Olson, Allan Liu, Luke Markowski and Teddy Allison.
Teddy Allison elaborates on his group’s project.
McMurray Elementary School sixth-graders Alexa Farinelli, left, and Anne Chang tell about the life and death of Korea’s Empress Myeongseong.
The lives of Korean Empress Myeongseong and American women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton might not be familiar even to avowed historians.
But two groups of McMurray Elementary School students are telling their stories in such an engaging manner that they’re headed to the Pennsylvania National History Day Contest on May 11 and 12 in Carlisle.
Drawing on the 2017 theme of “Taking a Stand in History,” sixth-graders Anne Chang and Alexa Farinelli qualified for the state-level event by finishing first in the junior group performance category during the regional competition held at the Sen. John Heinz History Center. They dressed in costume to portray the late-19th century principals in “Korea’s Queen Takes a Modern Stand,” pitting the progressive Myeongseong against her father-in-law, the reactionary regent Daewongun.
Fellow sixth-graders Teddy Allison, Allan Liu, Luke Markowski, Graden Olson took second regionally in the junior group documentary category for their video “Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Standing for the Vote.”
As part of their presentations, students are expected to answer judges’ questions. And to help prepare them for what to expect in Carlisle, Rebecca Bowman, who is serving as a National History Day coach at McMurray, asked why four young 21st-century men would choose a 19th-century seeker of equal rights as their topic.
“We have a lot of strong women in our lives,” Teddy explained, “and we knew it wasn’t always that way, that women were sometimes oppressed in the 1800s. So we really wanted to look into that and how everything changed, and then when we dug a little bit deeper, we found out about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and thought that she was really interesting.”
Stanton, a onetime ally of the much more renowned Susan B. Anthony, died in 1902 at age 87. Seven years earlier, Myeongseong had met her death 11 days shy of her 42nd birthday at the hands of Japanese assassins who sided with the Daewongun.
Anne and Alexa chose her as their subject after looking into their respective ancestries. Alexa’s Hungarian heritage, though, provided a paucity of suitable candidates for the “Taking a Stand” theme.
“We did research, and one name kept popping up,” Anne said about their eventual selection. “We were inspired by things she stood for, the things she did, for what she believed.”
Other Peters Township School District students who placed highly in the regional National History Day competition are:
• Alaina Nypaver, 10th grade, first place in senior individual exhibit for “Eleanor Roosevelt: Standing Up as the Conscience of Mankind.”
• Thomas Chang, eighth grade, second place in junior individual exhibit for “Students Stand Strong: The Kent State Massacre.”
• Joseph Nypaver, eighth grade, third place in junior individual website for “Branch Rickey: Taking a Stand Through the Integration of Baseball.”
• Isabelle Meyers, eighth grade, and Henry Meyers, seventh grade, third place in junior group website for “Quietly Taking a Stand in Every Neighborhood: How Mr. Rogers
Changed Children’s Television and Influenced Generations.”