Four seventh-grade students from Waco ISD's Lake Air Montessori School will represent Texas at the National History Day competition after earning second place in the Junior Group Performance category at the state contest in April.
The trip marks the first time a team from the school has advanced to the national competition.
The students, seventh graders Romina Dracos, C. C. Saldana, Grace Scott and Eliza Smith, created a performance about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a tragedy that helped spur labor reforms in the United States.
National History Day is an academic competition in which students create projects around a common historical theme. This year's theme was "Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History." Only the top two projects in each category at the state level advance to nationals.
Saldana said the team did not expect to hear its project announced among the national qualifiers.
"Then we heard, in second place, going to nationals, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and we all just like jumped up from our seats," Saldana said.
Dracos said qualifying for nationals still feels surreal.
"I'm still in shock. It really shows how real it is," she said.
History Day challenged the students in ways traditional classroom assignments often do not, Dracos said.
"We're all very advanced. And the way to get us to actually learn is to actually have something challenging," she said.
For Scott, the project was also an opportunity to tell a story she believes many students never encounter in class.
"The stories outside of it, in the shadows, need to come out and step into the light," Scott said.
The team advanced through regional and state competitions to earn a spot at nationals. Student performances are limited to 10 minutes, requiring participants to condense months of research into a brief presentation.
At the national competition, Lake Air Montessori will first compete in a preliminary round before attempting to advance to the finals.
Whatever happens in Maryland, the students have already made school history as the first team from Lake Air Montessori to qualify for the national competition.
"It's kind of like we're doing this about history, but in my opinion, we kind of made history," Scott said.
Smith said the experience could have an impact long after the competition ends.
"Doing this might inspire us to do bigger things in life now that we know what it's like to do something so big. And now, we want to make an impact," Smith said.
National History Day will take place June 14-18 at the University of Maryland.
Lake Air Montessori will be joined by another Waco-area team from La Vega ISD's H.P. Miles Intermediate School, which also qualified for the national competition.
