Explorers Win Best in Newspaper Award! Uncategorized by Sonya Bernard-Hollins - May 10, 2020August 18, 20200 Sasha Hollins represents her teammates Aliah Ward, Alayna and Nya Kuhn during the regional Michigan History Day competition at Western Michigan University. The made it to the State Finals where they won for Best Use Newspapers in the Junior Division! The Explorers competed for the first time in the Michigan History Day State Finals. They are the first non-school organization to compete and make it to the State finals! Their entry, “Exploring Merze Tate: Breaking Barriers Around the World,” won for Best Use of Newspapers special award at the State competition held live on YouTube on May 9th. The students were supported during a Zoom virtual watch party of Explorers, parents, and volunteers. The special award is one of many presented during the competition. The Merze Tate Explorers also presents an award to students in three age groups for Best Entry in African American History. Those winners included: Youth Division winners from Angell Elementary School for their documentary entry, “Breaking Barriers: Ruby Bridges.”Junior Division winners from Smith Middle School for their website entry, “Muhammad Ali and the Vietnam War Draft.”Senior Division winners from Forest Hills Eastern High School, “The Mustache Movement: Youth Activism in Grand Rapids.” Aliah and Sasha work on the details of the exhibit.Alayna places titles on the exhibit.Alayna and Nya create the interactive buzzers and games for the exhibit.The exhibit comes together with hard work from the team. Sasha accepted the award at the regional competition at WMU in March, 2019. The Spin and Listen game allows viewers to hear about Dr. Tate’s life in their own voice recordings.The students worked hard to create a unique interactive exhibit that included a Matching Game, Spin and Learn voice information buzzers, and a map of some of the significant travels of Dr. Tate’s educational and political firsts. Listen as the Explorers win for Best Use of Newspapers Special Award! The Explorers were excited about their first win in the State-wide competition. Like Dr. Tate, they made history by being the first non-school organization to enter, and then win an award at the regional and state levels. The hard work was worth it all according to the group. “I’m glad we won for Best Use of Newspapers,” said Aliah Ward. “We had a lot of newspapers to go through to find out about her. She did a lot in her life.” The Kuhn’s agreed. “We not only learned about Dr. Tate, but all of the other things that were going on around her at that time. We saw how the newspapers were used to share about social events. The advertisements, fashion, and prices for things were pretty cool to see too,” Alaya said. The Explorers had a great time creating the interactive buzzers to share highlights of Dr. Tate’s life. Listen to a sample of the mini-docs below: Nya Kuhn shares of Dr. Tate’s childhood in this 30 second clip. To watch the full Michigan History Day State Finals CLICK HERE!
