By Reed Gabhart, Head of Goshen Campus
While November means Thanksgiving for most people, at St. Francis it also means something else: time to write! For the third year in a row, students at both the Middle and High School devote the month of November to writing a novel by pledging to write every day. This unique program goes by the acronym NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. Spearheaded by Middle School language arts teacher Julie Mushkin, this program has grown by leaps and bounds and is extremely motivating to our talented writers. All students write at least 10,000 words. The cherry on top is that each student gets his/her novel published at the end of the process (and the Goshen library keeps a copy of these, too!). Here is an excerpt from an email Julie sent me about this year’s program:
“Congratulate these students on an outstanding effort! We had middle schoolers Sophie Kirby and Xavier Shelley hit/exceed 30,000 words (120 pages). I am in awe. We will definitely plan a celebration for their achievement.”
We are in awe too! BIG thanks to Anne Holmes, with the support of many Middle School teachers, who supervised the authors in Julie’s absence, and major kudos to the following authors:
- Abigail Runyon
- Alia Nawab
- Allie Rahman
- Amelia Gorman
- Arden Bleifer
- Ava Kurtz
- Avery Flynn
- Catherine Dewberry
- Emma Davis
- Emma Rose Farber
- Frey Blandford
- Gabby Alvarez
- Ikhlas Mohamed-Sharif
- Jack Scantland
- Jane McLeroy
- Jane Moore
- Kameron Julian
- Lane Coughlin
- Lucy Frederick
- Maren Saleem
- Mireia Cecil
- Mya Stevenson
- Sharifa Abukar
- Sloane Coughlin
- Sophie Kirby
- Sydney Shoemaker
- Xavier Shelley
- Zoë Petiprin
- Ella Davis