TOWAMENCIN – Four North Penn juniors have been named winners in the National Council of the Teachers of English writing contest. Nationwide 533 juniors whom their teachers identified as outstanding writers were nominated to participate in the contest. Of this already selective group, 264 were named winners. In Pennsylvania, a total of 10 students were recognized, four of them from North Penn.

For this contest students were required to submit a poem or prose piece that they felt represented their best work, excluding research or critical papers. Students additionally wrote a themed essay in which they were asked to examine the conflict between nurturing passions and meeting obligations and respond in a personal or imaginative prose piece that considered whether these two areas can be reconciled.

The following students have been named winners of this prestigious contest: Stefan Jablokow, Aparna Mukerji, Grace Shinners, and Yang Yue. They are AP Language and Composition students of Janet Kratz and Ellen McKee.

According to Kratz, having four of Pennsylvania’s ten winners is a record for North Penn.

“I am so proud of these students, who prove that North Penn students can compete with anyone in the country. This is a very prestigious national contest, and with only 10 winners in Pennsylvania, four were from North Penn, ” Kratz noted.