Rosa International Middle School’s largest team ever competed in the National History Day Contest in College Park, Maryland, last month and swept three categories of state projects.
The Rosa team – the school has competed in the national for 18 years – included 21 students, three teachers, and six projects from the state. The contest encourages students to research a topic through a specific lens or theme, with this year’s theme, Turning Points in History.
Research is conducted outside the school day on a voluntary basis. No credit is awarded, and no grades are earned, but the effort is made for the love of history and to represent New Jersey at the national contest in Maryland from June 9 through 13.
For the first time, Rosa swept three categories of projects at the state level: junior group documentaries, junior group exhibits and junior group performance.
Junior group documentaries included two 10-minute submissions. The first was “A Cry of Defiance in the Crossroads of War: Japanese Diplomate Chiune Sugihara’s Visas for Humanity,” produced by students Amita Oberoi, Tanishka Parmar, Giovannia Viglietta and Emmie Wang.
The documentary focused on Japanese diplomat Sugihara, who risked his life to save Lithuanian Jews during World War II by signing what is now known as Visas for Life. The students interviewed Sugihara’s son and uncovered an entire part of the story unknown until this year.
The second documentary submission was “The Spark that Ignited the Civil Rights Movement: The Children’s March of Birmingham,” produced by students Joyce Lee, Janelle Okore and Jaiden Womack. It focused on the 1963 Birmingham Children’s March, where 1,000 kids took a stand against segregation.
The documentary won Outstanding State Entry and third place – the Bronze Medal – in Junior Group Documentary at Nationals. The creators were chosen to showcase the documentary at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
The team also had two junior performance submissions. “Turning the Tides of Hatred Into a Shared Voice of Activism: The Killing of Vincent Chin,” is a 10-minute performance on the forgotten story of Chin, a young Asian American who was murdered in 1982. It placed in the top 10 at nationals and won an Asian American History Special Prize.
The performance was produced by students Audrey Cronk, Lucy Dubin, Shana Foley and Ava Rogers and will be showcased at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH).
The second junior performance submission was “A Desire, A Rebellion and Thomas Paine: Turning the Tides for America,” by students Zarish Hussain, Kaia Kuroda and Jonah Wallach. It consisted of an original musical with music, lyrics and choreography about “Common Sense,” the famed 46-page pamphlet Paine published in 1776 that argued the American colonists should leave Great Britain.
In junior group exhibits, the team had two submissions. The first was “Manufactured in the Ash of Crisis & Prejudice: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,” produced by students Khondaker Rahman, Elif Yavas, Elliot Zhang and Joyce Zhang. The production focused on the 1911 fire at a clothing factory that killed 146 workers, a turning point in labor history and human rights.
The second submission was “Pioneering the Underground Railroad: Isaac T. Hopper’s Quest for Freedom,” by students Charlotte Carlie, Sharon Chen and Linh Nguyen. The project was about Woodbury native Hopper, who developed and ran Underground Railroad activities in Philadelphia and New York and was credited with bringing 3,300 slaves north to freedome.
