Le Mars students place at national history competition

At the national competition of National History Day in College Park, Md. From left: Palani Permeswaran, Jeanne Rust (Le Mars Community Schools Challenge program coordinator), Yashila Permeswaran and Zach Kooistra represent Iowa's NHD theme "Minds at Work" by sporting hard hats and caution tape at the contests closing ceremony. [Click to enlarge]

Three Le Mars Community Schools students participated and two placed at the National History Day (NHD) competition June 15 through 18 in Maryland.

Palani Permeswaran placed fourth at the national competition in the senior historical paper division.

Yashila Persmewaran earned second in the nation in the Junior historical paper division and received a silver metal and $500 prize.

Zach Kooistra also competed at the national level in the junior website division.

Palani, Yashila and Zach have been participating in the NHD contest since sixth grade as a part of the Challenge program at LCS.

Palani, an upcoming junior, competed in the Senior Division of the NHD contest in the historical paper category. Yashila and Zach, both recently completing eighth grade, competed in the Junior Division of the contest.

Yashila competed in the historical paper category and Zach competed in the website category.

This year was Palani's fifth year participating in NHD, and his third year at the national contest.

Yashila has competed in nationals two out of her three years.

This was Zach's first year at the national level of the competition out of his three years in the contest.

After students have chosen topics and have researched for months, the NHD contest begins at a district level. This district competition for LCS students takes place in Sioux City at the AEA building. If a student moves on from districts, they then go to the NHD state competition in Des Moines.

Winners chosen from each of the eight categories from the state competition, then move on to Maryland for the national contest for National History Day.

Historical paper and Website category participants, like Palani, Yashila and Zach revise their projects between each competition. They are given two weeks after district and state level to revise before they must turn their work in to be judged. When they reached the national competition, each had a 15 minute face-to-face interview with a judge to review their projects.

"The judges said they learned more about that time period from reading our papers that were just about one person," Yashila said.

Palani fourth place finish was for his paper "George Washington Carver: Taking Action to Raise the Man Farthest Down; Leaving a Legacy for Us All."

In his paper Palani writes about Carver's efforts to help poor farmers improve their lives by using resources readily available to them and by teaching them practical solutions.

Carver was a graduate of Iowa State University, once he finished college he worked as a professor at Tuskegee University in Alabama. According to Palani, Carver was so focused on helping others that he rarely even cashed his pay checks.

Palani got a chance to visit Washington D.C. where he researched at the National Agriculture Library. He found 68 microfilm reels on Carver to explore, but could only choose a few because on each reel there are 1,200 slides.

"There was no way I could look at them all, I had to narrow it down to about eight," Palani said.

He also traveled 900 miles to the George Washington Carver National Monument in Missouri to research Carver's life.

Palani and Yashila each worked on their NHD projects for almost 11 months and Zach worked on his website for six months.

For Yashila's topic, "Frances Perkins: A Woman of Action Who Remember the "Forgotten Man" and Left a Legacy for Workers," she traveled to Washington D.C. to study at the Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building. Yashila also exchanged emails with Perkins' grandson.

"We emailed the Frances Perkins Center in Maine asking if there was someone I could talk to and it turned out her grandson was the one who emailed us back," Yashila said.

Yashila received a silver metal for the work on her project. She also finished second in the junior historical paper division of NHD.

Zach chose his topic, "Rachel Carson and Silent Spring: The Legacy of the Modern Environmental Movement," because he wanted a topic that wasn't "cut and dry."

"I wanted something that had a controversial aspect and something that was interesting," Zach said.

He worked from November to March on his project, and then revised his work, adding more sources and changing small things on his website before each level of competition.

Although Zach did not place at the national level, he was one of the top two winners chosen at the state level in the website category of the competition.

Jeanne Rust, Challenge program instructor at LCS said she believes the NHD organization teaches student not only about their history, but also research, documentation and presentation skills. Each of these are used throughout their education, she said.

"I think it's a really good way to show that historical events are always related to what is happening in the world and how it influences events for years after," said Rust about the NHD program.

Rust incorporates into her Challenge program for these reasons.

By November 1, each students in the challenge program had picked a topic, under this years theme "The Individual in History: Actions and Legacies," to work on in class for the project.

Then each day from January to March, students get a chance to work on their projects.

To help her students, Rust researches the topics herself so she can ask students the right questions about their project and push them in the right direction.

Students were required to use multiple sources for their project. Their bibliographies included every site explored during research and a written explanation of how that source was useful to them.

"It's a long process that takes a lot of time and effort, but its worth it in the end," Zach said.