Middle schoolers take home Vermont History Day prizes
April 14, 2023 | By Waterbury Roundabout 
Twenty local middle school students attended the Vermont History Day competition at the Univeristy of Vermont last weekend sponsored by the Vermont Historical Society.
The event drew more than 200 student participants who presented projects in a variety of formats including short documentary films, exhibits, paper presentations, performances and websites.
Held each year, the event invites Vermont students in grades 5-12 and home-study students ages 10-18 to create a project inspired by the contest theme. This year’s theme was “Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas.”
Harwood Union Middle School sent a group of 19 seventh- and eighth-graders accompanied by teachers Korie Born, Sarah Ibson, Jon Potts and Nick Gordan. One Crossett Brook student, Waterbury sixth-grader Yoshwin Antony, participated; his sponsoring teacher was Jennifer Hill.
Eight students were awarded prizes:
First Place Junior Individual Website - Will Clark for “Frontiers in History: The Manhattan Project”
Second Place for Junior Individual Website - Yoshwin Antony with “A Vermont Frontier in the Agricultural Revolution - John Deere”
First Place Junior Individual Performance - Jane Schaefer for “Sister Kenny Live and In Person”
First Place Junior Individual Performance - Eireann McDonough for “Taylor Swift in History”
Second Place Junior Individual Documentary - Tarin Askew for “Stonewall Riots”
Third Place Junior Individual Documentary - Jocelyn Brauer for “Harvey Milk: Expanding Frontiers in Politics”
Freedom and Unity Award - Emily Hill for an exhibit titled “Athenian Democracy”
Women's History Award - Maisy Gendimenico for an exhibit titled “The Radium Girls”
The other competitors in the group were:
Lily Adair with an exhibit titled “Pablo Picasso and the Great Cubism”
Emma Aither with an exhibit titled “The Life of Amelia Earhart”
Joc Bellanca with an exhibit titled “Anne Frank”
Nora Cosgrove with an exhibit titled “Frontiers in History: Pearl Harbor”
Caroline Cox with an exhibit titled “The Story of Irena Sendler, Savior of the Holocaust”
Harmony Devoe with a documentary titled “The Boom: How a Generation Crossed a Frontier”
Ben Goldhammer with an exhibit titled “Kate Warne: The First Female Detective”
Claire Nagurney with an exhibit titled “The AAGPBL: Frontier Women in Baseball”
Cali Neville with an exhibit titled “William Dorsey Swann: The Queen of Drag”
Cora Potts with an exhibit titled “The Rwandan Genocide”
Sydney Schaller with an exhibit titled “Marsha P. Johnson and the Stonewall Riots: A Frontier in Queer History”
Rowan Sexton with an exhibit titled “Surrealism Art: Breakthroughs in Art History”
Vermont History Day is affiliated with National History Day. Students from the state competition with the highest scores are invited to represent Vermont during the national event in June at the University of Maryland, College Park.