Finding a place in history

Incoming Flowing Wells Junior High School seventh-graders Savanna Bejarano, Vivianna Betancourt, Britteny Broom and Anjanette Guerrero will perform a play based on the life of photographers and explorers Emery and Ellsworth Kolb at the Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest, which will be held June 14-18 at the University of Maryland in College Park.

All four attended Centennial Elementary School last school year.

Gabbi Martin and Mindi Jones, who both will be eighth-graders at the junior high, will show off their Web site, which is dedicated to the life of architect Mary Colter.

Finally, Carlos Rios will take an exhibit on labor activist César Chávez to the national competition.

The contest is open to students in grades 6-12 and features five contest categories: documentary, exhibit, research paper, performance and Web site.

"You get to learn and explore different things," Gabbi said. "If you are in a classroom, sometimes you are stuck learning from a textbook or on the whiteboard. With this, you get to learn off the Internet and go places."

All of the students qualified for the national contest by doing well at regional and state contests.

Savanna and her fellow performers were the first-place winners at April's state contest.

Gabbi and Mindi's Web site earned the second-place spot at state and Carlos was selected as an alternate at state and was pulled up to compete at the national contest after the first-place winner dropped out.

Gabbi and Mindi attended the National History Day Contest last year as performers.

Their entry this year in the Web site category highlights the life of Colter, an architect who designed Fred Harvey Hotels for the Grand Canyon and Santa Fe Railroad.

The two began researching Colter's legacy last August and started building their Web site in January.

Their research included a visit to the Grand Canyon where they saw four out of the six buildings designed and built by Colter.

"She was a woman working in a man's world," Gabbi said.

The pair also attended a multimedia workshop to learn how to upload video to their Web site, which isn't published.

Gabbi and Mindi are on the 12th version of their Web site.

"If you make a mistake, it's a domino effect. It leads to another mistake," Gabbi said about building a Web site.

Gabbi, 12, first learned to build Web sites last summer when she participated in a science and engineering camp at IBM.

She recruited Mindi, 13, to help.

"I have actually learned how to make a Web site," Mindi said. "It is hard, but it is also easy."

Savanna, Anjanette, Britteny and Vivianna have learned how time-consuming research can be while writing their 10-minute play about the Kolb brothers.

"All I remember doing before we started writing it was reading and more reading," Savanna said. "Did I mention reading?"

The girls and coach Mary DeStefano visited the University of Arizona library to research the brothers and read letters the brothers wrote.

Emery and Ellsworth Kolb were early Grand Canyon pioneers who ran a photography business on the South Rim.

DeStefano, a retired Flowing Wells elementary school teacher, said primary resources such as the Kolb letters makes history relevant to children.

She has coached History Day participants for about six years.

"History isn't dates and numbers," she said. "It's people and events. I like that they know that."

The four girls all had equal parts in writing the script for their performance. They also helped build the set.

"This is about the people. You have to get along with people. You have to participate and write as a team and have fun with it," Britteny said.

Savanna said the Kolb brothers are worthy of recognition because they helped introduce the Grand Canyon to the world.

"I wonder if they didn't take the pictures, would other people know about the Grand Canyon?" she said.

Carlos, 12, pored over books, read articles on the Internet and interviewed a relative to create his exhibit of César Chávez.

"I'm Mexican and when I heard about him helping Mexican workers on the farm for not being treated right, I decided to pick him," Carlos said.

As part of his research, Carlos interviewed Chávez's grandson Anthony Chávez, who visited Carlos at Centennial Elementary School in May.

Carlos will be in seventh grade next school year.

He said he is excited to show off his exhibit and answer the judges' questions at the national contest.

But mostly, he's looking forward to how he and the others are getting to Maryland.

"I've never been on a plane," Carlos said. "That's the thing I'm most excited about."