"If you build it, they will come."
~ from "Field of Dreams"
I requested a translation for this letter and got a great e-mail from the man who does our Spanish translations. He said he enjoyed translating the letter and was excited about the project. He mentioned that he has always liked to write and wished he had been encouraged to publish in this way. I invited him to do NaNoWriMo with us. His email made me really happy and confirmed that teaching students about publication is an important part of the writing process.
I spent some time digging through my files to find students of mine who had won writing contests or had been published in the past. There haven't been many contest winners, because I haven't had students submit that many, but I have a nice long list of NaNoWriMo winners and students who have been published in our school's literary magazine. I typed up the list and am going to display this in my classroom. When a student says, "We can't win," I'll point to this list of kids who have done it in the past for inspiration.
Last Friday, I sat down at the computer and looked up several writing contests that colleagues had passed onto me. Some were for elementary school only, others were for high school only. I have yet to see a writing contest for middle school kids only. What's up with that? I also did some searching for writing contests, which proved to be quite overwhelming. There are an awful lot of writing contest scams to be wary of. I came up with a couple of promising choices, however.
Our school has a subscription to "Action Magazine" from Scholastic. They are having a "Dream Poetry Contest." There will only be one winner, but it's a simple contest and a good way to get started. They also have an on-going "Advice Column" contest, which I thought would be fun for my Advisory class to do. You can find these contests at www.scholastic.com/actionmag
"Teen Ink" magazine is completely comprised of student work: poetry, essays, interviews, opinion, art, etc. There are no deadlines; they are always accepting work to be published on their website as well as their print magazine. They only publish students between the ages of 13 and 17, so that is a bummer for my twelve-year-olds. My PIC (Partner-in-Crime), LaVerna, noticed two contests that fit into things we already do with students. One is an environmental essay, in which students think up a project that will have a positive impact on the environment and then write it up. Another is to plan, implement, and write up a community service project. The FAQs on the site state that these two categories get the least amount of submissions, and are therefore the most promising for publication. Their website is www.TeenInk.com
Creative Communication has three poetry and three essay contest per year. They publish anthologies of student work. No entry fee or purchase of the anthology is required. I scoured their website and it looks legit. It is run by professional writers and educators and they award grants to language arts teachers who have fifteen or more students published. They have divisions broken up into categories - grades 7-9 would be our category. They also have links to lesson plans, handouts, and resources. Their website is www.poeticpower.com
All of the contests I have done in the past have included a parent permission slip, but none of these do. This means I will either be writing (and thus submitting for translation) lots of permission slips, or developing a form letter that I can plug in the details of each contest.
We've been in school only four days, but I already feel great about this batch of students. They come every day prepared and ready to learn. The past few years, I've spent the first couple of days doing discipline, but these guys aren't here to fool around. I'm pretty sure I have some writers on my hands!
Tomorrow we start our Gary Soto unit and we should be submitting to our first contest within the next two weeks!
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