It’s become a regular thing for Jeff Montooth’s freshman Long Beach Poly PACE U.S. Government class to bring home national honors from CSPAN’s StudentCam documentary contest. There’s nothing regular about this year, however, which makes the nine honorees that much more special for Montooth’s group.
“I’m extremely excited and impressed that they did so well in a year like this,” said Montooth. “Doing anything is a success. It’s hard to do anything right now. I’m blessed with high-achieving, self-motivating kids and it’s pretty cool that we made over 80 documentaries and that so many were honored.”
The annual contest challenges high school students across the country to create a 5-6 minute documentary about a subject that interests them. This year, the 17th annual StudentCam contest, more than 2,300 students nationwide submitted entries. The Jackrabbits had two third-prize winners and seven honorable mention winners. The awards come with a cash prize for the students, with third prize bringing home $750 and the honorable mention winners netting $250 each.
Montooth’s students chose subjects ranging from immigration to gender-pay equity to the 13th Amendment. He said he was especially proud of his students for overcoming the restrictions of not being able to do in-person interviews or most of the other normal parts of the documentary process.
“I watched some of the other winning videos and a lot of them are in states that had less restrictions than we did,” he said. “Most of the other students are seniors, too, and ours are freshmen. It’s really amazing.”
Several of the documentarians were able to do a Zoom interview with Long Beach Congressman Alan Lowenthal.
Here’s a complete list of the Jackrabbit winners:
- Third Place: It’s time to change the 13th Amendment by Natalie Canalis and Estelle Laguerre
- Third Place: A Balanced Separation by Theany Heng, Victoria Heng and Molly Flynn
- Honorable Mention: Conspiracy Theories and Their Effect on Democracy by Sasha Johnson
- Honorable Mention: To Protect and to Serve by Maya Randolph
- Honorable Mention: Failures in the Foster Care System by Tiare Ho-Ching, Kassandra Villegas and Karyss Satele-Pinkney
- Honorable Mention: Student Athlete Compensation by Taylor Johnson
- Honorable Mention: The Period Problem by Eva Kisska, Lauren Villaverde and Lana Missios
- Honorable Mention: Equality for Black Women’s Health by Corryn D’Attaray and Isabella Willett
- Honorable Mention: Controlling Forest Fires, Controlling Our Future by Josephine Gore, Sofia Brys and Jocelyn Hebish
View all the winners and see the winning documentaries at this link: