Students at SASA are continually distinguishing their efforts and SASA's programs through year-round participation in both adjudicated and non-adjudicated contests and symposiums. International Science Fairs, Michigan Youth Arts Festivals, Scholastic Art Awards, Model United Nations, National Merit Scholars, Michigan MEAP Merit Awards, AP Scholars, Mathcounts and First Lego League are just a few of the contests and forums where SASA students are standout performers each and every year.
Scholastic 2010 - 2011
SASA Art and Writing Students Earn Awards Through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Program – Region – At – Large (16 State Region)
The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have celebrated 88 years as a unique presence in our nation's classrooms by identifying and documenting outstanding achievement of young artists and writers in the visual and literary arts.
This year 185,000 students in grades 7 through 12 participated through regional programs and 50,000 students receive regional awards and exhibition opportunities. Approximately 10,000 entries qualified for national adjudication, and 1,500 young artists and writers across the country received national awards.
By recognizing the most outstanding art and writing from secondary students, The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, which sponsors the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, seek to inspire excellence and to help launch the next generation of artists and writers on their creative journey. These students will join the long-standing tradition of The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, which annually celebrates the creative spirit of young people who are the voice and vision of tomorrow.
Congratulations to SASA artists and writers who have won awards in the 2011 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional program. Over 2,000 art entries and 1600 written submissions from 16 states were forwarded to the Regional Scholastic Art and Writing Awards program at the University of Iowa’s Belin-Blank Center for adjudication. Below is the breakdown of possible awards:
- Gold Key: The highest level of achievement on the regional level. Gold Key works are forwarded to New York City for national adjudication.
- American Visions & Voices Nominees: Works named “Best of Show” for each region.
- Silver Key: Works worthy of recognition on the regional level.
- Honorable Mention: Work demonstrating artistic potential.
Art Teacher Becky Prine Sullivan submitted 23 pieces with 13 earning awards at the regional level. Gold Key pieces will be shown in a virtual exhibit that can be viewed by going to http://www.education.education.uiowa.edu/belinblank website.
Gold Key Art Awards:
Sydney Veverka – Grade 11 – Jack Knows What He Wants
Tristan Zamora – Grade 9 – Painting – Soul City
Kristina Roland – Grade 9 – Drawing – Conversing with the Past
Joshua Rhodes – Grade 8 – Drawing – Hunter’s Pride
Marin Larsen – Grade 7 - Painting - Grandpa’s Tales
  
Jack Knows What He Wants Soul City Conversing with the Past
Sydney Veverka – Grade 11 Tristan Zamora – Grade 9 Kristina Roland – Grade 9
 
Hunter’s Pride Grandpa’s Tales
Joshua Rhodes - Grade 8 Marin Larsen – Grade 7
Silver Key Art Awards:
Hannah Riebschleger – Grade 11 – Drawing – Blisters for Two
Alex Weber – Grade 11 – Drawing – Still Life R.I. P.
Sarah Wallace – Grade 10 – Painting - When Life Gets Busy
 
Blisters for Two Still Life R.I.P.
Hannah Riebschleger – Grade 11 Alex Weber – Grade 11
When Life Gets Busy
Sarah Wallace – Grade 10
Honorable Mention Art Awards:
Sydney Veverka – Grade 11 – Drawing – Stormin’
DeJuan Black – Grade 9 – Drawing – The Smile I Left Behind
Joshua Rhodes – Grade 8 – Painting – Dawn
De’Asia Brown – Grade 8 – Drawing – The Three Cubs
Austin Smith – Grade 7 – Painting – Keeping Watch
 
Stormin’ The Smile I Left Behind
Sydney Veverka – Grade 11 DeJuan Black – Grade 9
  
Dawn The Three Cubs Keeping Watch
Joshua Rhodes – Grade 8 De’Asia Brown – Grade 8 Austin Smith – Grade 7
Over 1000 entries were submitted to the Multi-state Writing Regional competitions. The Multi-State Region has named its Gold Key, Silver Key, and Honorable Mention awarded writings for 2011, including several written by SASA students in grades 9-12.
Rachel Reid’s Language Arts Concentration 11/12 Grade Class award-winning pieces include:
Gold Keys:
Alice Vanston: “there is a light that never goes out”/”Soul Surfer”/”Crack Homage”/”Casa Bonita” (Poetry Collection)
Jacqueline Wieland: “Coming Home” (Short Short Story)
Silver Keys:
Benjamin Beltran: “Trumpet Played the Piano” (Short Story)Philip Bernstein: “Life Between Stoplights” (Short Short Story)
LaTia Jakson: “Journal Entry”/”The Ride”/”Heart’s Great Evolution” (Poetry Collection)
Carly Veverka: “An Ode to Insomnia”/”Orange Drank”/”Undercooked” (Poetry Collection)
Honorable Mentions:
Jacob Gorski: “dreamboat”/”Thinking CAPS ON”/”Hello,” (Poetry Collection)
Aja Philpot: “Absolutely October” (Short Short Story)
Brittany Robinson: “The City with No Name” (Short Short Story)
Jared Morningstar’s Language Arts Concentration 9/10 Grade Class award-winning pieces include:
Gold Keys:
Jessica Lalonde: “Firebird”/”Montague Street” (Poetry Collection)
Silver Keys:
Madison Veverka: “Soaked”/”Don’t Waste the Effort”/”Hair Statements” (Poetry Collection)
Honorable Mentions:
Esperanza Cirilo: “Apocalypse”/”The Right to Vote” (Poetry Collection)
Katie Mueller: “The Game”/”Hidden”/”Miserable” (Poetry Collection)
Caroline Sawatzki: “Departure” (Short Short Story)
Excerpt from SASA’s Gold Key Award winner Jaqueline Weiland’s Short Short Story, “Coming Home”
The single working streetlight exposed the night, shadows dancing along the pavement. Colors were reduced to blacks and grays, blending in the dark. Alone in the corner sat a girl, hunched in on herself. The tattered clothes that covered her back barely kept the fallen chill out, raising bumps along her dirty skin. A weathered hat covered her gritty hair like a bandage hides a wound.
Filthy clothes and scruffy hair told people passing by that she didn’t have a place to call home. All she knew was the tough life of the street, going days without food and nights without sleep. Her bare feet tapped the cement, the soles frozen and swollen, worn with the miles she had walked. Fear and pain marked sorrowful features on her face. Her body was tired, and her skin clung to her bones tightly.
She stood up on shaky knees as the world spun around her. Losing her balance she fell to the cement, which caught her with carelessness. She remained motionless, eyelids sealed shut. Time escaped her like sand through open fingers, her thoughts twisting deep in her mind. She was only partially aware of the blue and red flashing lights…
Excerpt from SASA’s Gold Key Poetry Collection winner Alice Vanston’s poem, “Crack.”
Running,
I felt the pine needles brush my face like
butterfly kisses.
With no identity,
each tree hit me in some way-
unsympathetic
for the scratches appearing on my porcelain skin…
Excerpt from SASA’s Gold Key winner Veda Lewis poem collection, “Last of Days”
It’s raining in the valley of your heart,
As you remind yourself
This is the last time
By this lake.
The memories you drink out of Dr. Pepper cans
Are bubbling as they disappear,
Fading into the back of your head.
You pull out your watch,
Slightly damp, but functional,
And look to the sand,
As if burying this moment forever
Is the only way.
The night is letting the water sparkle,
The moonbeams waltzing across the blue…
Excerpt from SASA’s Gold Key winner Jessica LaLonde poem, “Firebird”
I was born at the beginning of the end
at the very dawn of the veracity of light
in the heart of a wave,
at the point where its salty soul is cresting
and not yet falling, but flying in suspension.
There I drew my first breath
at the point where you lose track of weeks
and hours are no longer a currency.
There are age-speckled memories, like mountains,
grinded down and spread smoothly over like sand on a newborn beach
The days last a little longer,
the sun lets out a great, deep belly laugh
and shakes the whole earth
with a thousand thoughts of carelessness,
an extroverted pulse that unfurls like a
phoenix jumping in bursts of purple flame.
ICONS Gold Medalist and Crown Award
ICONS 2010 Earns Gold Medalist and Silver
Crown Award
Congratulations on earning the
Gold Medalist Award with 961/1000 points in the first round of judging by
Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) at Columbia University in New
York.
In addition, the magazine earned
3 of 3 possible all Columbian Awards for organization, layout and design,
placing ICONS 2010 in the 95th percentile internationally for the
quality within these categories.
The Columbia Scholastic Press
Association has requested the following items to be used on a “best
practices” DVD that is mailed internationally to schools that wish to
start or improve a publication.
 
Cover
Design
Marianne Elizalde Layout
pages 8 and 9 – Jessica
Walker
Writer – Christin
DeFord
Artists –Jazz Rolan and Sarah
Wallace
Columbia
Scholastic Press Comments on Best Practices DVD related to Layout, pages
8 and 9 – Using
forethought,
cohesion and professionalism, spread designers take the qualities of the images
into account.
The images
are not only worthy, but thematically and aesthetically appropriate to the
publications
concept.
Layout pages 72 and 73 –
Brianna Fulmer
Writer – Christin
DeFord
Artist – Jessica
Walker
Columbia
Scholastic Press Comments on Best Practices DVD related to Layout, pages
72 and 73 –
The
consistent use of type, quality photos, and strong, unbridled illustrations
indicate the diversity
and
wide range of talents each artist contributed.
Layout pages 76 and 77
–Brianna Fulmer
Writer - Jacob Gorski
Artists – Jaymes Johnson
Photographers for all
Layout – Vicki Wieland, Audrey Berkan, Chris Reuther, Hannah Vitu
Columbia
Scholastic Press Comments on Best Practices DVD related to Layout, pages
76 and 77 –
The
smooth visual and thematic flow between the cover of this volume and the
interior show that designers adhered to a consistent color palette. When spot
color is not used, gray-screened type reinforces a kind of visible connection
to theme.
In the Second Round of judging, ICONS earned a Silver
Crown Award placing it in the 95th percentile in the world.
The
Crown Awards represent the CSPA’s highest level of accomplishment in the annual
competition. This year, 1,434 magazines, newspaper, yearbooks and online
publications were eligible to enter the Crown Award adjudication process
through qualifying in the first round of judging. Participating programs
represented schools from across the United States and China. The panel of
judges represented art direction, writers, editors, technology and multi-media
editors of magazines from across the country, college professors, and retired
magazine advisers.
Thirteen
magazines earned Gold Crown Awards while 18 received the second highest honor
of a Silver Crown Award. Only two Michigan schools were awarded Crown Awards –
Cranbrook Kingswood School of Bloomfield Hills earned a Gold Crown Award, and
SASA from Saginaw Public Schools, earned a Silver Crown Award.
Congratulations
to the ICONS staff: Editor-in-Chief Brianna Fulmer, Assistant Editor Jessica
Walker, Artistic Director Marianne Elizalde, Layout Staff: Sydney Veverka,
Austin Kemp, Photographers: Audrey Berkan, Chris Reuther, Vicki Wieland, Hannah
Vitu, Writing Editors: Portia Brown, Nickolette De Clerk, Katie Francis, Jacob
Gorski, Katie Pope, Sevonna Brown, Business Managers: Audrey Berkan and Ben
Beltran, SASA contributors and teacher advisers: Becky Prine Sullivan and Jared
Morningstar.
Family Reunion
By: Christin DeFord (10th grade)
The wispy frills of smoke fill my nostrils, but it all
smells too pleasing.
The clinking of beer bottles next to plastic folding chairs
are surpassed by the boisterous laughs of my fat uncle Paul.
But from where I’m seated, I smell the breeze of the lake
mixing with the filling scene of the charcoal grill.
The tiny fragments of sand and sweat stick to my sun-kissed
back, although that doesn’t bother the any who is pacing up and down my calf.
He traces the rest of my leg while I wonder where his other
relatives have headed to.
And how I could sit here in a crowd of unconditional love
and still feel left out.
The ant, so miniscule, retrieves his dinner and heads back
down the landscapes of my limbs;
Back home to the mill that would soon by
crushed by baby Matthew’s light-up sandals.
Butterflies and Wishing Wells
By: Christin DeFord (10th grade)
She swings from the ropes that are attached to no trees,
And jumps to the waters that prove no depth.
She laughs at the fire that spits mere inches from her face,
And plays hide-and-seek with her imperfections.
Her heart is a reflecting pool that trusts not a soul, but
portrays curiosities.
She keeps her dreams locked in a jar,
One that smells of lilacs and lemon tea.
And sometimes, one of them will slip out and beg to be read.
Sometimes, I might do just that.
The ones that break free won’t simply stay put,
But they’ll float up and up and up until they’re surely in
heaven.
If I hold it real still, I can hear the memories of salty
beaches and sunsets,
And feel the twinkling constellations tickling my insides.
When she finally wakes up from this drowning ride,
By God, she’ll find herself.
She’ll slink back into the open door, conjure up a lemonade,
And throw one more design
into her dream jar.
Jesus said, “Now is my
soul troubled; and what shall I say?”
By: Jacob Gorski (11th
grade)
I don’t know. If Jesus
didn’t know, how would I?
Caught my eye in the storefront,
on the way out,
and I noticed how black it
really was,
how black I really am.
Mary Janes fall out from my
pocket
little white girl faces
hit the pavement
pick them up and put them
in my mouth
let them melt on my tongue
let the ugly I have worn
like a name tag
melt away with it
and even if it is just for
a second,
I am Mary Jane
and what the man said
inside the store,
was said into the blue eyes
of Mary Jane
and I tell myself that
the next time I catch my
eye in a storefront
it will be the bluest eye
bluer than Mary Jane’s
or Shirley Temple’s.
Jesus hung himself high
up on that cross
So will I, high up,
high enough so that I
won’t be able to look down
and still see it all,
high enough so I cannot
be reached.
Candy has melted,
melted all the way.
Me liking myself
has all the way melted too
and the worst part
is that when I told myself
then
was a plain lie
and there is nothing else
to be
but what I am.
I am tar, I am dirt,
I am everything expected.
I wonder if Jesus felt
bad
once he returned to
heaven
and read the Bible,
read everything he said
and thought to himself,
“I’ve said too much.”
I am done and I will rip
this
paper up
because the shame will
ebb and flow
over and over
ebb and flow
until what I’ve said
is gone,
until I have bought more
candy.
I have said too much.
I am dirt, I am tar.
Not a lie this time,
but the truth.
I am dirt, I am tar.
Shame has never followed the
truth.
© 2012 Saginaw Arts & Sciences Academy
1903 N. Niagara St. • Saginaw, MI 48602 • Tel: (989) 399-5500 • Fax: (989) 399-5515 • Email Us
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