The 2022 regional awards have been announced! If you haven’t done so already, log in and download your certificate and award letter. March 22 is the last day to access your certificate(s) and award letter in your student dashboard.
On March 10 at 7:00 pm ET, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers will be hosting a virtual Regional Ceremony on YouTube Premieres! The Regional Ceremony is an opportunity to honor all of our regional participants and award winners. It is free and open to the public! Sign up here to receive an email reminder. And save the date here.
As we prepare for the Regional Ceremony, we want to take the opportunity to share some of the amazing regionally awarded works with you, our Remote Programs’ community, here on the blog! At the regional level, students have the opportunity to receive the following awards: Gold Key, Silver Key, Honorable Mention, American Visions Nominee, and American Voices Nominee. A few weeks ago, we highlighted several American Visions Nominee and American Voices Nominees. This week, we’re celebrating our amazing Silver Key and Honorable Mention winners! While we will not be able to feature all of our incredible Silver Key and Honorable Mention winners in this post, you can head to your regional webpage for a list of the award-winning works in your region.
This year the Scholastic Awards received nearly 260,000 entries nationally; 20,000 entries were from the Remote Programs alone! In the Remote Programs, only 9 percent of all works received a Silver Key. And only 12 percent of all works submitted to our Remote Programs received an Honorable Mention. Receiving a Silver Key or Honorable Mention is an incredible achievement, and we are honored at the opportunity to recognize the incredible creativity and talent of our Remote Programs teens!
To all of our participants, thank you for sharing your work with us! Regardless of the outcome of the awards, we hope you’re proud of the work you accomplished; your hard work is an achievement in and of itself.
The following are just some of the visionary works that inspired us.
Honorable Mentions
You try to force words out of your mouth, but words are feathers. Beautiful rainbow feathers. Every color, any color. Every pattern, any pattern. There are no feathers. No color, no pattern. You are in a gray, triangular room. You are not you.
Zachary Arnold, Snooze, Flash Fiction. Grade 11, Miami Country Day School, Miami, FL. Samuel Brown, Educator
I feigned interest in things
because I thought
that would make more people
interested in me.
Social rejection was worse than lying to myself.
Over time, I forgot what authentically made me happy.
Liv Amiri, Recovering Myself, Personal Essay & Memoir. Grade 9, Crossroads School, Santa Monica, CA. Peter Bartlett, Educator
If they were to be asked why they came,
they would all say the same.
How naive to believe in the American Dream.
Wendy Amador, See Them, for You Will Always Need Them, Short Story. Grade 12, Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, Seattle, WA. Ali Stewart-Ito, Educator
Silver Keys
don’t ask how i got like this. selfishness
was your mother tongue, not mine;
i only learned it in translation
from your old gardening books.
Bella Agarwal, always her, not me, Poetry. Grade 12, Desert Mountain High School, Scottsdale, AZ. Kevin Sheh, Educator
“I have so much energy, I don’t know what to do with myself,” worries Anxiety.
“Think of something relaxing. Like the beach, imagine you are at the beach,” gleams Optimism.
“I think I’m hungry, I need to eat something.”
“Just breath,” you remind yourself.
Sophia Blythe, Sleepless Night, Humor. Grade 11, Wheeler School, Providence, RI. Bob Koppel, Educator
Congratulations again to all our Remote Programs participants and award recipients, especially to all of our Silver Key and Honorable Mention winners! We can’t wait to celebrate together on March 10.
Looking for more opportunities to be recognized? Students of African descent are invited to participate in local and national ACT-SO competitions! NAACP’s ACT-SO is a community-based program that provides a forum for youth of African descent to receive recognition for their achievements in academics, literary arts, visual arts, and the sciences.
The Scholastic Awards Summer (SAS) Scholarship Program provides students who have been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards an opportunity to attend summer art or writing programs on a full-tuition scholarship. Students in grades 7–11 who receive a Gold or Silver Key and complete a SAS Scholarship application will be considered for a SAS Scholarship. March 4 is the deadline to apply.
The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are open for entries annually from September through December. See upcoming important dates to learn more about what’s next for the Awards.
Region-at-Large 