Two St. Junipero Serra Catholic (SJSC) students on March 9 were recognized at the 19th Annual Chapman University Holocaust Art and Writing Contest awards ceremony for their outstanding writing.
Each year, SJSC submits one piece of student art and two student essays from eighth-grade students to the contest. Alexandra Hamm’s essay, titled Justice in the Hands of Humanity, and Davin Maas’s essay, titled Blueprint for a Better Society, were selected as the school’s entries in the writing competition. Alexandra and Davin’s essays were chosen as two of the five finalists in the middle school prose category, and Alexandra’s essay went on to be named the winner.
More than 250 middle and high schools and some 7,000 students from more than 30 states and 9 countries participated in this year’s contest. This is not the first time the work of SJSC students has been recognized. Each year, two student essays are forwarded to Chapman University for the final round of judging. This is the fourth year in a row that both essays submitted were selected as finalists and that one of those essays went on to place first or second. All winning writing and art is published on the Chapman University website.
To have the writing of two current students recognized in a competition of this scope and caliber is extremely exciting for SJSC. It speaks both to the quality of the students’ work and to the quality of the school’s writing program. The program gives students a strong foundation that not only serves them well today, but also will continue to benefit them throughout their high school years and beyond.
