Storybuilders Project Leads to Publication for Lady’s Island Students – Beaufort South Carolina The Island News
Staff reports
The creative writing efforts of nine students from Lady’s Island Elementary School (LIES) will be featured in an upcoming national publication, the 2022 Young American Poetry Digest. Their writings revolve around the South Carolina state motto “While I Breathe, I Hope”.
These student works are the result of a creative writing project called “Storybuilders,” led by retired teacher Carol Dawson and the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Students selected in 1st3rd and 5th graders worked with volunteers, including authors, poets and educators, to create poems, short stories and one-act plays throughout the 12-week program. Upon completion, The Children’s Labor was published internally with a bound anthology of their work.
The students also hosted a presentation of selected readings and book signings for their peers, family, and Pat Conroy Center dignitaries.
“This project gave our students a deep, immersive experience with the arts,” LIES Principal Davina Coleman said in a press release. “The skills are so transferable to everyday life. We train great writers and hopefully inspire some of these students to choose writing, journalism or screenwriting as a future career.
Student poetry from the Storybuilders project was then submitted to the Young American Poetry Digest competition. Nine students had their work chosen for publication – Lucas Cardenas, Trey Dasher, Ashton Hinson, Owen Huang, Ja’Mya Rivers, Daniel Russell, Kamad Seabrooks-Gilbert, Gaberiel Singleton and Christian Williams.
Poems were selected for inclusion based on creativity, age appropriateness, sensory/figurative language, structure, and poetic techniques.
LIES is the district’s original arts school. The school’s arts programming and the work of the Pat Conroy Literary Center are made possible in part by grants from the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
