The English Department offers its congratulations to every student at Crossroads for memorizing a poem last week and performing it for your class in our celebration of poetry and the power of the spoken word in Poetry Out Loud.
Crossroads has been involved in this nationwide program for seven years, and each year, we are impressed by the effort, talent, and success of the student body. This year, a few English teachers also memorized a poem in order to share the challenge and excitement with the students, practicing our empathy.
There were a multitude of stars this year, as students combined their literary analysis talent with practiced articulation, self-confidence, and poise to bring their poems to life. In each grade, a winner was selected to compete last Friday in front of the student body. Below are the grade level winners all of whom were phenomenal. Of these, Eliana Zuckerman ‘15 earned the most points from the judges and will proceed to the regional competition on Tuesday February 2nd at SPRINGBOARD, located at 1310 Papin, #402, 63103 at 1:00. As it is during the day, we will not all be able to attend, but we encourage anyone who can to come see Eliana to support her as she competes in the hopes of moving on to the State-level competition in March.
Past Crossroads winners:
grade 7
JoJo Jones
Gaia Hittle
Nick Babusis, grade level winner with Chris Abani’s “War Widow”
grade 8
Eyvind Hovmand-Warner
Malaika Ferguson
Emily Hirshman with Mary Cornish’s “Numbers”
grade 9
Rebecca Jaffe
Naysa Adams
Nyla Long with Tori Derricotte’s “Passing”
grade 10
Faith Blank with James Dickey’s “Hospital Window”
Elysse Price
Annie Chappell
Zoey Fleischer
grade 11
Andy Zhang
Julia Weinstock
Kayla Sullivan with Al Young’s “The Blues Don’t Change”
grade 12
Hera Scher-Zagier
Charlotte Sechrist
Eleanor Marsh
Eli Bryant
Eliana Zuckerman with “Blackberrying” by Sylvia Plath
Past Winners:
2014 Essence Lee ‘14 also won Regionals
2013 Essence Lee ‘14 also won Regionals and States
2012 Terry Watkins ‘12 also won Regionals and States
2011 Terry Watkins ‘12 also won Regionals and States