In San Gabriel High School’s gym, the group sat surrounded by their competitors. All finalists for the senior division group for documentary film were going to be announced. 

Buzzing with nervousness and excitement, senior Andre Ruiz and juniors David Lara, Kaela Longboy, Hudson Mirsky and William Schnider shivered in eager anticipation. 

This group, among many other ambitious ensembles, took up the challenge of showcasing their National History Day (NHD) Project on March 2. After what felt like ages of waiting, it was announced that they won first place in their category and would be going on to compete at the state level on April 21-22. 

With the aid of history teacher Ms. Aditi Doshi, the students were able to create, refine and perfect their project over the course of three months to ultimately produce a ten-minute-long documentary film that clearly addresses this year’s NHD theme: Turning Points in History. 

The students were relieved that their months of hard work had paid off. 

Their film explores the impact John Hammond had on jazz and racial relations from the 1930 to 1960 as an American record producer, music critic and civil rights activist.

Incorporating historical imagery and immersive voice-over, the group worked towards showcasing the influence Hammond had on incorporating Black musicians into the segregated music industry. They formulated their script after completing necessary research, which consisted of primary and secondary texts and images.

“We were trying to highlight the complexity of needing a white record producer to promote black music to white America” group leader Ruiz said. “Today, Black musicians are more integrated in the music industry, and they are now able to promote themselves.”

The group believes that in order to do well in the competition, they need to have a passion for the topic and a belief that they could win.

“I really like jazz and taking AP African American studies,” Ruiz said. “I decided our group was going to combine these topics of interest for our film.”

Delving into the topic did not prove to be an easy task. Through their research, the group needed to compose a script.

“I did the script editing, most of the annotated bibliography and the voicing for the project,” Schnider said. “My role was necessary to make sure the project was organized and presentable for the judges, as we avoided getting penalized for any glaring errors.”

Finding time outside of school to dedicate to the NHD project was tough.

“One of the challenges was getting everyone to work together on time,” Mirsky said. “Everyone has their own lives to work on, so having a time for us all to sit down and work together was hard.”

This led Ruiz to take the initiative and encourage his group members to do their part.

“I learned that sometimes you have to understand that you have commitments to a lot of things, but that isn’t an excuse to not work on another commitment, in this case being in NHD,” Ruiz said. “Sometimes I would have to tell my group to get on top of things, join calls and pressure them to get things done, but I only did this because I knew they were smart and wanted them to win. So I learned you have to make sure everyone steps up to their full potential to get things done.”

Leading up to the competition, preparation and finalization were very time consuming. 

“The time we spent working on it ramped up throughout the project,” Schnider said. “Near the beginning, it was only an hour or two a week or so. But in the final three weeks, I was spending nearly an hour a day compiling sources and finishing everything up before the due date.”

Highly involved in the collaborative process, Ms. Doshi ensures that her students feel prepared to compete. She helps them construct ideas, suggests how to conduct research, revises the final product and offers constructive feedback.  

“They need to know how to conduct research, construct an argument and support it with evidence,” Ms. Doshi said. “Every step along the way, in my classes, students are supported. They’re given all sorts of examples and constant feedback so that their work is of the highest quality.”

Her ultimate goal is to teach students how to develop crucial research skills.

“I want them to take away a sense of confidence in their skills, to know that they are strong historians,” Ms. Doshi said. “I want them to leave knowing that they have the ability to do authentic, rigorous research and also to feel a real sense of pride to come together and collaborate to create something that’s real.”

Overall, 22 students belonging to eight different projects won first-place awards at the regional competition.

“The competition wasn’t exactly something we breezed right through,” Longboy said. “We had high expectations, but after seeing the other competitors and their films, we were actually intimidated. I know my teammates’ heartbeats stopped when the presenter called up our school. It all just happened so fast, and since we were the last team to be announced as going to state, it was really shocking to us.”

In anticipation of the state competition, the group is actively working on making changes that can improve their film.

“Some of the subtitles were messed up,” Schnider said. “Other than that, there are some spots in the video we’d like to flesh out with images. We’re still waiting on the judges’ feedback, so we’ll take that into account too.”

Ruiz says that it was through teamwork and leadership that the team was able to propel forward.

“Honestly, I’m just really proud of my friends,” he said. “Though they had their laziness here and there, I was able to push them to their fullest potential. All that hard work really did pay off. I can’t wait to see what happens at state; win or lose, I know we did our best.”