BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Two local middle school students are headed to the University of Maryland at College Park next week to compete in the final round of the National History Day contest.
Aryash Shyam and Sudha Chandrasekaran, sixth-graders from Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School in Bethlehem, won first place in the junior exhibit division at the state competition earlier this spring. They beat out more than 550 other students with their project on the Great Depression, advancing to the national round.
This year’s National History Day theme is: “Turning Points in History.”
During the upcoming national competition, Aryash and Sudha will display their exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. They’re part of a select group of students who were chosen for the opportunity on Wednesday, June 12.
The day prior Aryash and Sudha will get to tour the U.S. Capitol with U.S. Rep. Susan Wild, D-Lehigh Valley.
“I had lots of fun with this project,” said Sudha, 11. “We learned a lot.”
“It’s a very interesting topic,” added Aryash, 12. “We thought that it was all about people facing depression, losing their jobs, but we also found stories of resilience and people earning money during the Great Depression.”
The Great Depression
Throughout the last six months, the students have researched how the Great Depression – an economic downturn that lasted from 1929 to 1939 – impacted the United States’ social and economic landscape, prompting reforms that still benefit the country today.
Aryash and Sudha started their research by creating a list of questions they wanted to answer. They next looked online for primary and secondary sources. They even visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York.
“Primary sources are important because they give firsthand material about what people experienced during that time period instead of possibly biased information from somebody else,” Sudha said.
The students researched the experiences of men, women and children during the Great Depression. They also included perspectives from people of different races and backgrounds.
“For the men, it was more about politics,” Aryash said. “Their perspective was blaming the president for what happened, and they wanted to get jobs.
“And for women, their perspective was worrying how they would take care of their children, their family during that time.”
Through their research, Aryash and Sudha read and analyzed letters that children wrote to Roosevelt asking for clothing, supplies and money. They included transcriptions of these letters on their exhibit board.
“It kind of put their lives into perspective with ours, showing how brave they were,” said Sudha.
Success stories
Despite all the hardships people faced during the Great Depression, there were some people who succeeded financially, the students learned.
One person who found success during the Great Depression was Charles Clinton Spaulding, a businessman who led the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company – the largest Black-owned business at the time.
In their project, the students included a copy of a letter Spaulding wrote to W.E.B. Du Bois, the famous Black scholar and civil rights leader, about the benefits of the Great Depression.
“The Depression has made all of us better [businessmen] in that it has taught us how to manage our business more efficiently,” Spaulding wrote in the 1931 letter.
Others also managed to find success during this time period, including the grandfather of an LVA teacher, Peter Yablonski.
Aryash interviewed Yablonski about his family’s experience during the Great Depression. The recording of this conversation is part of the exhibit.
Yablonski, an earth science teacher, spoke about how his grandfather became a millionaire during the Great Depression.
“He just did a lot of different things and where he saw an opportunity to make money he did it,” Yablonski said in the interview. His grandfather was a barber who owned a restaurant and corner grocery store.
The students also researched the ways the Great Depression informed government responses during other times of national financial struggle, like the recession of 2008 and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic.
What they learned
Sudha said she enjoyed learning about the many New Deal programs and agencies created under Roosevelt that still exist and benefit people today. For example, the National Labor Relations Board safeguards employees’ rights, and the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to regulate the securities industry.
“It’s really inspiring to see so many people that are still committing so hard to make sure the Great Depression doesn’t happen again,” she said.
“It’s really inspiring to see so many people that are still committing so hard to make sure the Great Depression doesn’t happen again.”Sudha Chandrasekaran, sixth-grader at Lehigh Valley Academy
Because of the students' success with National History Day, all middle school students at LVA will be participating in the contest next year, said Charles Raeford, the middle school principal of LVA, which moved into a new building off Schoenersville Road this school year.
Raeford said Sudha and Aryash were successful in the National History Day contest because they work well together. They have different personalities that complement each other: Aryash is driven and focused while Sudha is fun and easy-going, he said.
“They’re two very intelligent, super smart, highly motivated, highly engaged kids,” he added.
Though the two said they are more science-inclined, Aryash and Sudha enjoyed working on the project. It made them more interested in continuing to learn about history.
“History can happen again,” Sudha said. “So if we learn about it, then if that happens again, [we’ll] be prepared.”
National History Day winners will be announced Thursday, June 13.
