Twenty students from Herricks High School and eight from Herricks Middle School represented the best of New York state at the prestigious Kenneth E. Behring National History Day competition, held recently at the University of Maryland. Of the 20 projects competing in the Senior Division from New York, seven were from Herricks High School.
At the high school level, Vanessa Sun, Rachel Kim and Alan Chen were awarded Most Outstanding Entry on Equality in History and placed ninth in the nation for their website, “The Freedmen’s Bureau: Standing on the River of Jordan-Exchanging Chains for Freedom’s Opportunity.” Melissa Lau, Felisha Ma, Esme Chen and Ashley Wong were also finalists, placing 10th in the nation for their performance, “Extinction by Assimilation: Encountering the Native Industrial Schools.” They collectively received more awards than any other high school from New York State.
The Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest is the final stage of a series of contests at local and affiliate levels. Nearly 3,000 students from all over the world presented their research projects on local, state, national and world history at this weeklong event, which featured the theme: Exploration, Encounter, Exchange. Herricks High School students also Grant 2K earned eight awards at the state-level National History Day competition, while Herricks Middle School students won three.
The students spent countless hours working on their research, for which they accessed major databases in the libraries, analyzed their findings and developed meaningful and comprehensive projects.
—Submitted by the Herricks School District
