Three student writers and winners of a literary contest are displaying their works in Taylor & Co. bookstore.
Photo courtesy of Gabriel Fontes
The shelves of a Ditmas Park bookstore are temporarily stocked with the works of some talented local Bensonhurst students.
Almost 90 young writers from the Leaders High School, a public school focused on project-based learning, entered a writing contest by Taylor & Co. Books as part of a school project. Each entrant wrote a collection of brief vignettes or personal accounts similar to Sandra Cisneros’ famous novel “The House on Mango Street,” which chronicles a year in the life of a 12-year-old girl in Chicago.
Gabriel Fontes, a 10th grade English teacher at Leaders, organized the competition as a way to encourage student to develop their writing voices and to inspire literary creativity.
“The idea was really to give students a place to shine and have a lot of affirmations going into the school year,” Fontes told Brooklyn Paper. “We’re always searching for ways to make projects meaningful and authentic and have an authentic audience of purpose.”
Fontes said he wanted the kids to walk away from this project with an internalized confidence, as they often come to 10th grade with little to no belief in their writing abilities.
“Sadly, so many students enter 10th grade without a writer identity. They don’t see themselves as a writer,” he said. “Maybe they’ve had discouraging comment or feedback in the past and I think it can be a very narrow idea of what it means to be an excellent writer.”
One winner, a Aiman Sajid, a 10th grade student at Leaders, said that while she isn’t sure if she’d consider a longtime career in writing, it was nice to have her work recognized. Participating in the contest gave her a new perspective on writing.
“I just wrote about random life experiences and how they affected my mindset and it just kind of showed how I observed things,”…
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