Garden City High School students earn writing honors
Five Garden City High School students have been recognized with the 2025 Achievement Award in Writing from the National Council of Teachers of English, and one student has been named a winner in the 42nd annual Nassau Reading Council Young Authors’ Contest.
The NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing, established in 1957, is a school-based program that encourages high school juniors to write and recognizes some of the nation’s best student writers. This year, 680 students were nominated from 41 states, Washington, D.C., and several countries, including China, Guatemala, Jordan, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and Thailand.
Each submission was reviewed holistically by two to three independent judges, who evaluated content, purpose, audience, tone, word choice, organization, development and style. Students received distinctions of First Class, Superior, Excellent or Merit.
Congratulations to Garden City High School recipients Sarah Phinney (First Class), Ashley Wang (First Class), Anais Bardizbanian (Superior), Valentina Clavijo (Superior) and Alexandra Gregory (Excellent).
Special thanks to English teachers Laurie Bocca, Amy Regis, Samara Skolnik and Suzanne Tavernise, for reviewing submissions and selecting the final entries for admission to the contest.
In addition, Garden City High School sophomore Amanat Jain was named a winner in the 42nd annual Nassau Reading Council Young Authors’ Contest. The contest is open to students in grades K-12 across Nassau County’s public, private and parochial schools and finalists were selected from each grade level. Entries, which could be prose or poetry, were personal narratives.
Special thanks to English teacher Crystal Ferraiolo for her support during the submission process.
