Members of the Shaker Heights Power of the Pen team. Seated, left to right, Isabel Siegel, 8th grade, Asher Voorhees, 9th, Zoe
Stiefel, 9th, Anjum Reddy, 9th, Ingrid Holda, 9th, Alexa Carpenter, 8th. Standing, left to right, Erika Pfeiffer, co-advisor, Ezra
Ellenbogen, 9th, Neko Tien, 8th, Daniel Carroll, 8th, Sara Lambert, co-advisor.
44 FALL 2021 | WWW.SHAKER.LIFE
The Shaker Heights City School District is a charter member of the 35-yearold
club, where students compete in a series of district, regional, and state
competitions by writing short creative stories using provided prompts. Despite
the pandemic eliminating in-person competition, the Shaker Heights Power
of the Pen team had a tour de force season in 2021, with numerous students
capturing honors at district, regional, and state levels. In addition to Isabel’s
success, Ingrid Holda, now a ninth-grader, took 11th place overall at the state
level out of 237 state-level writers, and won a Director’s Choice award for her
story “Watch Me Fly.”
“There must be something in the water in Shaker,” says Erika Pfeiffer,
co-advisor of the Shaker team for 14 years. “There’s a lot of talent here. These
students root for each other. It really is a team.”
Co-advisor Sara Lambert agrees. She and Pfeiffer, both language arts
teachers at the Middle School, have coached Power of the Pen together for
seven years.
“You read the stories and it’s jaw dropping,” Lambert says. “There is a lot
of raw talent. Sometimes they need someone to give them a little prompt to
write. We try to push them out of their comfort zone a little bit.”
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