In my role as Executive Director of Teaching and Learning at Summers-Knoll, I work on curriculum and instruction at the whole-school level, the classroom level, and the individual teacher/student level. This year and last, I collaborated with the 3rd/4th grade and Upper School teachers on planning and enacting short story writing projects. Recognizing the pedagogical value of writing for a purpose and audience outside of school, 3rd – 8th graders entered a state-wide youth writing contest sponsored by the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) to which students could submit short stories. The “Write On” contest submission deadline for third, fourth, and fifth grade writers was February 5th, 2024. The submission deadline for the “It’s All Write” contest for 6th – 12th graders was March 3rd, 2024.
While all SK 3rd – 8th grade students wrote short stories, submitting a piece to the contest was optional. Winners of the “Write On” contest were announced at the AADL Awards Celebration held on Saturday, April 20. SK’s fourth grader, Tej Parikh won 2nd place! Congrats, Tej! The winners of the “Let’s Write” contest for 6th – 12th graders will be announced on May 24, 2024. Thus far, we know that 6th grader, Maya Romero is a finalist. Go, Maya!
Regardless of the contest’s outcomes, the students who choose to enter the contest become better writers by going through this process, a process that, in some ways, mimics the reality of the work of professional writers: they work on pieces for days, weeks, months, sometimes years; they submit their work to various publishers, experience a lot of rejection, and persist until someone agrees to publish their work.
The SK students who submit their work to the AADL writing contest get to feel the satisfaction of producing and submitting an original piece of writing for an audience external to SK. It takes persistence to stick with the writing process from start to finish, and it takes courage to share one’s own writing, receive feedback from fellow writers, and enter a piece into a contest for public consumption.
If students don’t “win” this year, they will have to weather disappointment, but that, too, is a reward—learning how to “lose” is just as important as learning how to “win.”
In the domain of science, this past weekend on Saturday, April 20th, several of SK’s 2nd and 3rd graders competed in the Washtenaw County Elementary Science Olympiad (WESO). SK was one of 33 schools and our 9 students who competed were among over 1,700 students in grades 2 through 5 who participated across 15 events. SK brought six teams for six different events: iRobot, Map Reading, Mystery Architecture, OnTarget, Pentathlon, and Read It/Build it. During the tournament, spectators and coaches are not permitted in the competition events – students get checked-in to their event at their assigned time, and then they go off by themselves to compete against all of the other schools’ teams.
After months of weekly practices and preparation, coached by a team of parent volunteers, all of the SK students rose to the occasion. They worked with their teammates, completed their events, and did so with a unanimous sense of success. Two of the SK teams won medals: our Pentathlon team won Honorable Mention and our Read It/ Build It team won 4th place!
Similar to the writing contest, competing in science olympiad is not just about winning. At our Dragon Time WESO celebration this morning, many of the students spoke about the value of participating even if you don’t win a medal. As Jack said, “It doesn’t matter if you win as long as you have fun.” It’s precisely that spirit that engenders success in the long run.
Competitors want to win, and they should – it’s a competition after all, and ambition is important when competing. But it’s the “having fun” part that will draw them back to competitions in the future, and the more they compete, the stronger they will become in their perseverance, cooperation, sense of accomplishment, familiarity with failure, and moving through feelings of disappointment – this is what truly matters. This is success.