If you were to curate a story of your world, how would your chosen images tell a story that is important to you?
This was a prompt for the students writing for the NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing.
2015 NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing winner Abby Thacker of Lincoln East High School wrote:
“The setting is a small Sunday school classroom in a small church in a small town. A white plastic-top table with crayon marks and marker stains is pushed against a wall. Old orange leather chairs are scattered around it. In the corner of the photo, a brown-haired girl is shyly looking through the doorway, her mother behind her.”
On May 6, the Nebraska English Language Arts Council partnered with the Nebraska Writing Project in “A Celebration of Young Nebraska Writers” at the State Capitol in Lincoln.
Students recognized included 2015 winners of two NCTE student awards programs:
• editors of NCTE-recognized award-winning student literary magazines
The Nebraska Writing Project sponsored poetry of place readings by Nebraska Poets Twyla Hansen and Matt Mason and by 12 elementary, middle school, and high school students.
The poem, “Earth as Home,” in the collection of Mikayla Dorff of Lincoln East High School, winner of 2015 NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing Certificate for Superior Writing began
The earth spoke to me
through the ancient pictures
in the pitch black sky.
Bright stars peeking through
the curtain overhead, hiding the
sleeping sun.
Nothing brings the NCTE position statement Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing to life better than student writing like this!