Creative Arts and Writing Contest Ceremony

We hosted our annual Creative Arts and Writing Contest Ceremony on April 30 ^th at Gatehouse Café!  This was our 25 ^th (or is it 26 ^th or 27 ^th ?) ceremony.  We’ve been celebrating our students’ creativity with this contest for so long, we have lost count! Our entire IAS community voted on artwork in the following four categories:  Drawing, Painting, 3D-Sculpture/Mixed Media and Photography/Graphic Design. In addition, our community voted on writing in the following three categories:  Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.  The Rotary of Springfield, represented at the ceremony by IAS founder, Joan Ledebur, donated Target gift cards for all seven categories for honorable mention, third, second, and first place awards. The Rotarians were also able to help judge the artwork!  

Alison Cordo, Assistant Administrator, and Kelcy Pierre, ISAEP Resource Teacher, applied for and were awarded an Educate Fairfax Grant to help support the contest and the printing of the literary magazine (in progress) that will include all the submissions to the contest. Dr. Lynette Henry, Executive Director of Educate Fairfax, and Meredith Ayala, Manager of Grants and Program Development of Educate Fairfax, were also in attendance. So many parents, guardians, students, faculty, and staff were in attendance that it was literally standing room only in the back!  

Thank you to all the teachers who spent so much time working with our kids to submit their entries and connecting them with the Virtual Writing Lab tutors, who were also honored at the ceremony.  

The Creative Arts Contest and Ceremony was a group effort. Thanks also to all who served on the Creative Arts Committee and those who pitched in on the day of to make the ceremony run smoothly.  A BIG thank you to Alison Cordo, Assistant Administrator, and Deanne Lyon, Acting Nontraditional Schools Educational Specialist, for their tremendous organization of the contest.  And, as always, thanks to our Administration led by Mike Salaita, for supporting the contest and ceremony.