2014 Charter Essay Contest Winners Present on the State Capitol steps
The 10th annual Minnesota Charter Public Schools Essay Contest event was held on the South Steps of the MN State Capitol on Wednesday May 7th, 2014. The windy and cool weather didn’t stop our amazing student writers from sharing their powerful, insightful, and sometimes funny, winning essays! Thanks to all of the students, schools, and families who came out in support of our winners. Special thanks to TCF Foundation for co-sponsoring the event, to Eura Chang at Macalester College, and to Kare11 News for reporting on the event!
Download the 2014 Winning Essays Booklet
See Kare 11’s tv report on the event here
Describe the best day you’ve had at school.
What made it the best day?
That’s the question that more than 2,600 Minnesota charter school students wrote about this spring. We deeply appreciate their insights. We also appreciate the faculty of the approximately 50 Minnesota charter public schools whose students submitted essays. We take a little space here to explain this booklet and the annual Minnesota Charter Public School Writing Contest.
This is the tenth year that the Center for School Change has run this writing contest, and the eighth year that TCF has been a co-sponsor. We deeply appreciate the support and encouragement from TCF, including Bill Cooper and Beth Topoluk.
We run the contest because we believe in the value of writing, and believe that students need more opportunities to share their work. We also believe it’s vital to honor strong student work.
In February we sent the “prompt” listed above to all of Minnesota’s charter public schools. As noted above, about 50 schools responded, with more essays than we’ve ever received before. (About 2,200 essays were submitted in 2013).
Macalester College student volunteers, led by Eura Chang, helped to review these essays. They were divided into four major categories, students in grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. After the Macalester students’ review, a second review was conducted by CSC staff. We selected what we considered the best and have published them here.
During National Charter Schools week in May, we gather at the Minnesota State Capitol to hear from and honor the winners. We’ve learned a great deal from reading these essays. We hope you will too.
Again, our thanks to TCF, the volunteer Macalester students, and to all participating schools, educators, families and most importantly, the students.
Congratulations to the worthy winners!
-Center for School Change Staff
May, 2014
Check out the following photos of this great event: