Four Pueblo middle school students to represent Colorado in national history competition

Four Connect Charter School eighth-grade students will represent Colorado in the 2022 National History Day competition, a virtual competition from June 12-18 at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland.

Jordan Alfonso, Cloie Cortez and Averie Williams will compete in the group performance category, performing their 10-minute play, "Ida Tarbell vs. Standard Oil: The Debate Over Americas' Prominent Oil Monopoly."

The play is about early 20th-century investigative journalist Tarbell and her role in exposing John D. Rockefeller's monopolization of the oil industry through the Standard Oil Company.

Ben Knudsen will compete  in the individual documentary category with his project, "Jane Addams: The Debates Over Child Labor and the Diplomacy that Followed."

"It’s incredibly gratifying," Connect Charter School teacher Shane Preston said. "They put in a ton of work to get there."

Students must compete at regional and state levels before reaching the national level. The top two projects in each of the nine categories at the state level make it to nationals.

More than 500,000 middle and high school students conduct research into history-related topics as they vie for a chance to compete in the annual National History Day competition.

Research and creativity

Alfonso, Cortez and Williams not only had to write the script for their play about Tarbell, but also had to get creative.

"We write our scripts and then we have to choose all our props and paint our backdrops," Alfonso said. "Then we memorize the script and figure out which costumes we are going to wear for each role."

Knudsen's documentary about social worker Jane Addams' fight to end child labor was the first documentary he had ever put together.

"There was a lot of research," he said. "I had to find plenty of sources (and)  then had to write a script, get pictures to put into a documentary. I eventually put it all together and then edited it to make it better."

Teacher Laura Medina gave Knudsen some guidance but said he deserves "full credit" for his documentary, which placed second at the National History Day in Colorado competition on April 30.

"He did an amazing job just finding everything on his own and putting everything together," she said. "I helped guide him a little bit, I would say, but for the most part, he took control."

Pueblo Chieftain reporter James Bartolo can be reached by email at JBartolo@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Four Pueblo middle school students go to national history competition