The Power of the Pen team
had a tour de force season in 2021,
with numerous students capturing
honors at district, regional,
and state levels.
WWW.SHAKER.LIFE | FALL 2021 45
Cardboard Box
By Zoe Stiefel
Once it was mailed
Now it rots in the rain
On the lonely doorstep
Brittle, brown and stained.
Simple, dull, torn,
Not much to see
Yet through the eyes of a child
There’s much more it can be
Step inside, climb aboard
And your world will transform.
From imagination and wonder
Endless marvels are born.
It might be a rocket
That blasts to the stars
To meet and greet aliens
That reside on planet Mars
Or perhaps it’s a time machine
That takes you back through the past
To when giant lizards roamed Earth
And ruled landscapes vast
Flip it upside, and
It’s a cave to explore
With mysteries deep and
Labyrinths galore
Crawl inside with your toys
For hours of play,
Close it up in the dark and
It’s a great hideaway
Or grip the flaps tight,
You’re the king of the track,
Screeching ‘round corners
There’s no speed you lack!
Or maybe it’s a pirate ship
Sailing open seas,
With the wind in your hair
And a salty sea breeze
It can be a spaceship
That’s at your command
You’re an astronaut captain
On distant planets you’ll land.
With belief, imagination
And creativity,
It can be anything you
Want it to be
But to those careworn adults,
Slaves to their clocks,
In their eyes, it is only
A cardboard box.
Published in the 2020 Book of Winners,
“The Cardboard Box” earned 2nd place
at the 2020 Power of the Pen
State Competition.
Writing Prowess in the District and Beyond
Isabel and her Power of the Pen teammates are the latest and most
visible examples of the success Shaker Heights students have
enjoyed with the written word. In 2016, two Shaker Heights High
School graduates – Wesley Lowery, as a reporter at the Washington
Post, and Kathryn Schulz, as a staff writer for the New Yorker – were
awarded Pulitzer Prizes. Shaker students regularly excel in statewide
and essay and playwriting competitions. The student newspaper,
the Shakerite, routinely collects national honors for excellence in
journalism. The student literary magazine, Semanteme, has been the
springboard for the careers of several professional writers.
This writing prowess is not confined to the public school district.
Students in area private and religious schools, such as University
School, Laurel School, St. Dominic, and Mandel Jewish Day School,
regularly share the winner’s circle in competitions with their public
school peers. While the popular media likes to define young people
by video games and TikTok, the traditional written word is clearly
alive and well among young people in Shaker Heights.
“I don’t worry a lot about the demise of the written word.
Reports of its death are always greatly exaggerated,” says critically
acclaimed author Celeste Ng, a 1998 Shaker Heights High School
graduate and author of the bestselling novel Little Fires Everywhere.
“I was lucky enough to have many opportunities to write at Shaker,
from a teacher encouraging me to write poems way back at
Woodbury, to working on Semanteme, to the playwriting class I took
at the High School.
“But more important than any particular class or club was the
general message that writing was a worthwhile pursuit, and that it
was something that was within my reach,” Ng adds. “Young people,
like everyone else, respond to writing that resonates with them,
whether it speaks to the particulars of their lives, issues they care
about, or larger questions of the human condition.”
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