Cornwall High School sent out a text and email blast last Thursday that said: “Congratulations Ellen & Moses!”
Sophomore Ellen Kramer and junior Moses Usen won an in-school Poetry Out Loud competition at CCHS, and can now move on to compete against other school winners locally, regionally in the state, Assistant Superintendent Megan Argenio said.
Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages the study of great poetry. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about literary history and contemporary life. Poetry Out Loud is a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation, and the state and jurisdictional arts agencies.
Since 2005, Poetry Out Loud has grown to reach more than 4.1 million students and 68,000 teachers from 17,000 schools and organizations in every state, American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Each year the English Department at CCHS has every student in the high school memorize and recite a poem, as part of Poetry Out Loud. After recitations in class are complete, each teacher chooses one student to move onto the in-house CCHS competition. The winner of this event moves onto compete against other winners locally, then regionally and finally at the state level.
“The students who performed all did a fantastic job and were quite impressive,” Argenio said. “This year we had a tie for first place. Congratulations to Ellen and Moses. Dragon Proud for sure and congratulations as you move forward to the next round!”
She also thanked the CCHS English Department “for supporting our students with this program and encouraging them to express themselves in this creative way”.
