School principal Jonas Barcinas said more than 400 hardbound copies of books written by kindergarten to sixth grade students were published by the Publishing Team National Learning Inc. in Topeka, Kansas.
“For the past years, normally we have our kids just write and bind their work. But this year we kind of took our event to the next level and we were successful. We anticipated that because of some delays that we will not make the deadline but we did. Everyone is happy about it,” Barcinas said.
Third grade teacher Lyzandra Barcinas, one of the Young Authors’ event coordinators, said it took them almost four months to compile the contributions from the students.
“A lot of them are potential writers,” Lyzandra Barcinas said about the students.
“They can be an author in their own way. You never know — one of them might become a good writer,” the school principal said.
In an interview, fourth grader Joshua Mendiola, said his story is about war.
“I wrote the story for my older brothers because they like war stories,” he said. “I always write stories and I want to be an author someday.”
School principal Barcinas said parents bought their own copies of the books, which are also available in the library.
“We want our kids to feel that they are authors. We want our kids to publish more books.”
Lyzandra Barcinas along with teachers Elizabeth Church and Judith Castro said they wanted this year’s Young Authors’ event to be unique and meaningful for the students, staff, parents and the community.
The commitment of the school staff and administrators as well as the support of the Parent Teacher Association made possible the printing of the books, the principal said.
He said he was thankful to the students for their outstanding work.
The school is now encouraging its students to start drafting their stories for next year’s Young Authors’ event.
On April 17, school principal Barcinas said they displayed the students’ books outside the classrooms while the parents picked up their children’s report cards.
The parent turnout on that day was 97 percent, he said.
The school also held a poster and door decoration contest.
The winners for the door decoration contest were classroom B-5 of the third grade students of Elizabeth Church, first prize; kindergarten classroom C-9 of Carmencita Hill, second prize; and first grade classroom A-4 of Elaine Cabrera, third prize.
For the Young Authors table display, the B-5 third grade classroom of Elizabeth Church got the first prize; the B-7 second grade classroom of Merced Guerrero, second prize; and the A-2 first grade classroom of Tess Camacho, third prize.
Classroom D 11-13 of Lyzandra Barcinas, a third grade teacher, had the most number of participants, followed by the second grade classroom B-8 of Valencia Flores, and the first grade classroom A-2 of Tess Camacho.
In joining the CNMI-wide Teacher Appreciation Week, Jonas Barcinas is hoping that teachers will continue caring for the children.
“They should remain strong, patient and motivated, and they should love what they do despite the stress embedded in their profession,” he said.
