Windham students explore 'frontiers' of D-Day, plague, MTV

Students at Windham Junior High School explored the "frontiers" of history for a chance to present their work at an area college.

Graduate students at Youngstown State University visited the school on History Day last week and selected several projects from seventh and eighth graders that will be presented at the university in April.

The winning projects explored topics such as D-Day, the bubonic plague, "The Wizard of Oz," the Titanic, basketball greats Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, England's King Henry VIII, Pearl Harbor, abolitionist Harriet Tubman and the "Bone Wars," a feud between two rival archaeologists.

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Social studies teacher Stephanie Parish Smith said students were able to choose their own "frontier" and then worked together to create their project.

A team of seventh graders, Bryan Smithberger, Alex Eye, Michael Bolyard and Devin Sherman, worked on the D-Day presentation. The project included a hill made of sand featuring plastic Army men, an authentic World War II Army helmet, and interviews with two war veterans. One veteran was the great-uncle of a school staff member. The other, Gene Harmon, was Eye's great-uncle. The presentation also included a copy of the book "Four Hours of Fury," in which Harmon's story was included.

The invasion of Normandy helped lead to the end of the war in Europe, the boys noted.

Malikye Petrich and his classmates Kohl Clark and Jaiden Moore worked on a presentation on the bubonic plague, acknowledging that they took some inspiration from living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Petrich said the plague, which had its first wave in 1347, was "one of the most deadliest plagues in history." The disease killed as many as 200 million people, and strains of the disease are still in existence in some parts of the world, the students said.

The presentation included the nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie," a song that came about because of the plague. Petrich said he and his classmates sang the song as children, not knowing its origins.

Mikeylana Wilson, an eighth grader, worked with her classmates on a presentation focused on Harriet Tubman's "Walk to Freedom." They discussed Tubman's work leading more than 300 slaves to freedom on The Underground Railroad, and said she also was a spy, a nurse and housed freed slaves.

"We felt like she should get more recognition," Wilson said.

Kierrah Sanders and Makenna Jones told the story of Ruby Bridges, the first Black student to attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. On her first day of school in 1960, Jones said, many parents kept their children home, and Ruby was alone in her classroom with one teacher.

"She was 6 years old, and she paved the way for civil rights," Sanders said.

Not all projects took on serious subjects. Other groups of students focused on athletes, "The Wizard of Oz" and MTV.

Jocelyn Jenkins, an eighth grader, worked with a team of seventh and eighth grade students on the MTV project because of her love of music. The presentation explained how Music Television was launched in 1981 and propelled music into a visual medium.

"I'm a very big music fan," Jenkins said. "It really makes me happy."

Reporter Diane Smith can be reached at 330-298-1139 or dsmith@recordpub.com.

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Windham students explore 'frontiers' of D-Day, plague, MTV