NORTHFIELD — Psychedelic rock’n’roll and Ronald Reagan were a few of the history projects on display at the Pioneer Valley Regional School cafeteria Tuesday morning for Decades Day, an annual history fair for 11th-graders.
PVRS social studies teacher Aimee Brown said that students can choose to research whatever topic they want. Most choose something that they are personally interested in, or that has some connection to what they may want to pursue after high school. The point of the project, Brown said, is for students to learn how their topic has been influenced by larger historical trends.
For the annual fair in the cafeteria, students make posterboards to show one another the main points of their projects. Some dress up in period-appropriate costumes, too.
Most students’ projects tied in to their own hobbies. Rylie Zager, who attends rodeos in Vermont, brought horses to school for her project on the development of the rodeo traditions since before the Civil War.
Ethan Lanoie’s project was on New England sports teams. “I wanted to find out why people in New England love sports so much,” he said. “What I found out was, they love sports because they’re the best at them.” Part of Lanoie’s project was about how the life of Red Sox player Ted Williams was impacted by World War II.
Several students researched trends in pop music, like Faith Rathbun, whose project was on 1970s rock. People are drawn to that period’s music for the flashy, psychedelic imagery and the cool fashion, she said, “but when you look a little deeper you find meaning in it.” Cambria Johnson-Brown researched ’90s rock, when bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden developed a new kind of music that was about “not caring what other people think.”
Alex Taylor’s project was one of only a few that focused on a specific person. His was on Ronald Reagan. At his station, Taylor handed out jelly beans and fortune cookie-style aphorisms taken from Reagan’s well known quotes.
“He had a lot of great one-liners,” Taylor said. “I loved the sense of humor.”