Belmont History Day Project 'One Giant Leap' to Awards

Because of the unexpected rocky landscape at the scheduled lunar landing site, astronaut Neil Armstrong was required to disengage the automatic system and pilot the landing craft, Eagle, he and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin were riding to the moon's surface back in July 1969.

The unexpected maneuver used so much fuel that Armstrong, the first person to step on the moon, landed the "Eagle" with less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining.

If there was one thing that linked that landing on the moon 44 years ago and three Chenery Middle School students who were about to present their entry at the Massachusetts History Day District Competition, it would be taking their mission down to the final seconds.

The trio of eighth graders were tweeking their project – a visual documentary presentation of the first man mission to the moon – within the seconds of being asked by judges to present their project.

"We really waited until the night before [the competition] to finish the video so we had to make cuts, size the photos and read the script," said Kaila Gendron, who with partners Ellie Doblin and Katie Starr created.

"We had some technical difficulties so we were working on it in the car and we actually didn't finish it until 30 seconds before we went on," she said.

But like Armstrong, the end result was success as the girls' entry, "Apollo 11 -One Giant Leap," was awarded second in the group documentary junior division at the Massachusetts History Day District Competition held earlier this month at Winchester High School.  

The placement means the girls have advanced to the Massachusetts state finals on Saturday, April 6, at Stoneham High School with expectations of representing the state in the National finals at the University of Maryland in June.

The group's achievement is a significant accomplishment, especially since the Belmont School District no longer requires all eighth graders to work on a History Day project as in years past. 

The girls' work was done as part of a "club" under the guidance of eighth-grade teacher Suzanne Zmijewski.

The mission on National History Day is to improve the teaching and learning of history in elementary, middle and secondary schools so that students become better prepared and more knowledgeable citizens.  

National History Day, a nonprofit organization located at the University of Maryland, provides a theme each year along with support materials. Students in 6th to 12th grades research and create historical projects that relate to the year's theme.

History's important events

This year's theme is "Turning Points In History: People, Ideas, Events."

"A lot of people look past events like this because other people went to the moon and they said 'OK, this is getting old'," said Doblin. 

"So we wanted to go back and tell people that this is an important point in history because it united the world not just here in the United States," she added. 

"It was something that we did together," Doblin said.

And this presentation has the advantage of having an fairly unique primary source: one of the three astronauts who traveled to the moon on that summer week in 1969.

Michael Collins was the man circling the moon as Armstrong and Aldrin descended to surface. 

And Collins just happens to be the grandfather of Katie Starr. 

"And he was interested in doing it," said Starr who set up and interviewed her grandfather.

"It was fun but also stressful because we had to do it a couple of times because he was messing up," said Starr. 

"We had so many sources that said things like 'how pretty the earth looked from space' but we had a primary source that could describe it from being there," said Doblin.

The group decided that they would go with a "film" documentary because of an abundant of visual material associated with the event.

Researching the project was not the most difficult aspect of the project – using sources from old newspapers on microfilm to on-line libraries – but rather deciding what material to use from the vast amount of information gathered. 

After citing each document used came writing the script to the video which took numerous revisions due to time limits and highlighting interesting parts. 

"We had arguments on what to cut out of the documentary. We had a 10 minute video of Michael Collins talking about the importance of the mission that we had to cut even though he had a lot of interesting things to say," said Doblin.

And it all came to a head the night before the competition when the trio pulled an all-nighter – from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. – to complete the project.

"We all got really stressed," said Gendron, which included "yelling, chair throwing and crying." 

"We had to take laps around the block in the middle-of-the-night," said Doblin as each component of documentary – the music, script, photos and video – required being in sync to work.

"We were surprised that the judges really liked it especially since we had no sleep putting it together," said Doblin.

The girls' are now revamping the documentary with advice from their teacher after reviewing the judges' comments.

"We'll try not to do it the night before the state competition," said Doblin, with a smile.