Several freshmen attended the National History Day regionals held at the West Kendall Regional Library on Feb.10, winning first place in three categories. The winning entries – a documentary, an exhibit, and a paper, will represent Gulliver at the Florida History Day Contest in Tallahassee in May. 

Students worked over the course of a semester on their group or individual projects. Thomas Kellog, Nicolas Ribera and Patrick Castro Alves won first place for their documentary on the Irish potato famine, Ethan Barras, Logan Garcia and Matias Akerman won for their exhibit on the fall of Constantinople and Alexandrine Malval-Deeb won for her paper on the effects of the Haitian Revolution. 

“Gulliver has participated way back in NHD regionals, but none of the current teachers have ever done it, so it’s new for us,” social science teacher, Dr Jacqueline Grant said. 

Students along with their parents arrived at around 9:30 AM to check in and went to a  conference room to receive directions for the day. Competition officials divided the library into several sections for each project category. Students were then notified about the time the judges would interview them about their presentations. As regionals were new for everyone, no one was sure what to expect. This created mixed feelings among the participants. 

“I am very nervous yet excited to be at regionals,” Max Taylor said, “It feels like there’s butterflies in my stomach.”

For their projects, students had to research and create a presentation on the theme “Turning Points in History.” Projects could be in the form of a documentary, a paper, a performance, an exhibit or a website. 

“It is a long process for ninth graders, but it’s taught them things like how to make sure they have strong and reliable sources as well as the fact that they can’t just find everything they want by just googling it,” Grant said. 

While the process of producing the projects was easy for some, for others it was the opposite. 

“My experience was a little bit hard because working in a group of three is never easy since you have to divide work equally and that did not happen for my project,” Stella Cardoso said, “It was a hard process, but it was worth it as the projects turned out great and we ended up getting to regionals, and I’m happy I got through it because now I am much better at working in groups.”

In the end, the three categories that won were a documentary, an exhibit and a paper. Thomas Kellog, Nicolas Ribera and Patrick Castro Alves won first place for their documentary on the Irish potato famine, Ethan Barras, Logan Garcia and Matias Akerman won for their exhibit on the fall of Constantinople and Alexandrine Malval-Deeb won for her paper on the effects of the Haitian Revolution.