St. Joe’s scholastic success
“in one ear, out the other” by grace wertanen
Earlier this month, Scholastic “Art and Writing awards” announced the high school award winners. A competition in which thousands of students enter every year, Scholastic gives out many awards to St. Joseph High School students.
Only the top 15% of entries earn awards and St. Joe accumulated 71 awards this year.
“I briefly looked at the Scholastic winner site...only one other school in Michigan had about the same number of winners we did, and that was Detroit Country Day, a private school in Beverly Hills, Michigan,” Ms. Bean Klusendorf, College Writing teacher, said. With all the success St. Joe has in this competition, one has to wonder how they do it?
Mr. Matt Culver, AP Studio Art teacher, attributes SJHS success to our “inquiry-based learning.” Inquiry-based learning is a teaching strategy where teachers present a scenario and ask questions which makes students investigate solutions and then reflect, ultimately coming to a conclusion. Mr. Culver explained that this allows students to have independence in their work and lets their ideas flow.
In regards to SJHS’s writing success, Ms. Christine Greissinger, H. English 10 teacher, thinks our writing-based curriculum plays a constructive role.
“There are many schools that are literature based, but we take a different approach. Writing a variety of genres, studying the craft of both personal and published writing, and utilizing various rhetorical and stylistic devices help our students to move beyond the traditional, 5 paragraph essay,” Ms. Greissinger, said.
Ms. Klusendorf also attributes St. Joe’s success to the encouragement in which students receive. If it wasn’t for the encouragement from our teachers, many students would not enter.
“After experiencing the whole Scholastic adventure my first year here, I became just as enthusiastic. It's an amazing high quality art show that truly benefits our students if they do go into art,” Mrs. Julie Beam, Graphic Arts teacher, said.
Art and English teachers strongly encourage students to enter any work they are proud of. They say that it is a great opportunity and students will not regret it.