(Scotch Plains, NJ—April 23, 2015) Hoboken
resident Aaron Kurland, a freshman at High Tech, attended an awards ceremony at
Union Catholic High School to receive his Certificate of Merit from the New
Jersey Council of Teachers of English (NJCTE) for his original short story
entitled “Red,” announced Dr. Joseph
Giammarella, Principal of High Tech.
Kurland entered the 2015 Writing Contest
“Encountering Art,” sponsored by NJCTE, with an original, if enigmatic, one-page
story about a quizzical soldier in the throes of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Certificates of Merit recognize the top scoring
students from schools that submit qualifying entries from three different
students.
Encouraging New Jersey students to write
independently and well in response to a challenge outside of the classroom, the
NJCTE High School Writing Contest provides support for teachers to assist
students in their growth as thinkers in the parlance of the written word. Moreover, the NJCTE High School Writing
Contest helps students to discover their voices as they draft and submit
poetry, short stories, and personal essays.
Growth in self-awareness, as well as perseverance in visiting and
revisiting individual literary works, prepares students for entry in any of the
genres of the competition. These
stepping stones contribute to a student’s success in other forms of writing and
literacy, including those found in the Core Curriculum Standards.
