This year, five Cypress Falls students received awards in the prestigious Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. The students who received awards are Stephen Nguyen (11) and Christine Nguyen (10), who received Silver Keys as well as Diana Nguyen (10), Mariangel Medina-Rodriguez (10) and Gabriela Williams (12) who received Honorable Mention.

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is the longest running and most prestigious program for teens who want to share their art in the United States. It’s also the nation’s largest source of scholarships for young artists and writers.

As an assignment, the creative writing class at Cypress Falls submitted pieces into the program, and for most of them, it was their first time submitting their work into something like this.

“Usually I’d be hesitant [to submit] for sure,” S. Nguyen said. “Somehow I felt like it was right to submit this particular piece.” 

After submitting their pieces, those five students were shocked to find out that their work had been noticed and received awards for their talents. 

“When I first submitted it, I just thought that it wasn’t really gonna get anywhere because usually I don’t do competitions, but when I heard that I got Honorable Mention, I was really stoked,”  Williams said.

The students worked very hard on their pieces and all that hard work paid off in the end. They were able to pour their thoughts out onto paper for others to read and enjoy.

“I’ve never shared it to such a scale, and to have it be recognized, it means a lot to me because I love writing, it’s my passion,” S. Nguyen said.

The opportunity to submit a piece into Scholastic Art and Writing is one that students wouldn’t want to pass up. Students can gain quite a bit of recognition and gain experience from the event.

“Writing is very much like a method to me and the same way that I would with any other sort of art and how a lot of other people describe it as just pushing their own experiences out into the world and being able to show their own world view,” C. Nguyen said.

Students had to go through a process of composing their literature, having the teacher critique their work and then edit what needed to be fixed. Once they had finished editing it to their liking, they typed out the final draft. 

“I had two weeks beforehand of prep time to be able to draft and write my own thing and I also had a lot of stories in my mind already that I was very willing to write down,” C. Nguyen said.

The students will be recognized at a ceremony for Gold and Silver key winners on March 30 from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at The Ballroom at Bayou Place.