(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.
