Eunice Kim, staff writer

The Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards results were released on Feb. 14. Beverly won both gold key and silver key and two honorable mentions. The gold key was won by junior Bardina Soltani for her work ‘Thought Process’ , the silver key was won by Valeriya Velyka with her work, ‘Vacation Home Plans’. The honorable mentions, Stavroula Kyriazis and Hans Tercek turned in ‘Caught Red Handed’ and ‘Lake House’ respectively.

The Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards have been giving opportunities to students to use their creative minds since 1923. Every year, artists, writers, filmmakers, photographers, poets and sculptors are encouraged to submit their original work in the competition. Students don’t compete in a designated area. Instead, The Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards receive entries in all categories were received regionally. The winner receives a gold key as a prize for winning a competition.

“The Art Department teachers all have a requirement that their students submit their work to a certain number of contests each year,” visual arts teacher Deborah Joseph said. “Each teacher likely had students participate.  The students are the ones who sign up and submit their work.”

Students who are taking Joseph’s class or art teacher Melony Bronder’s class were required to enter the competition. Not only did the competition give participants a chance to show off their talents, it also gave them a chance to prepare for real-life situations.

“Participating in opportunities to show your work provides a real-world experience beyond the classroom.  Going through the experience of simply signing up, filling out the forms and determining the file format necessary and submitting all items correctly is by itself a useful learning experience. In these competitions items need to be submitted absolutely correctly or risk being cut simply because of a submission errors,” Joseph said.

When Soltani submitted her self-portrait, she was concerned about her product.

“I didn’t really work on my self portrait much until the final few days before the deadline and I was getting worried I wouldn’t finish,” Soltani said. “I basically spent the last three days before the submission date working non-stop on it and was pleased with the results.”

Velyka was also unsure about her works when she submitted them online.

“I didn’t really expect to win anything because [my submissions] were my first year plans from architecture,” Velyka said.

Bronder is proud of her students’ hard work and accomplishments.

“It’s good for the students to put their work out there and be recognized for it,” Bronder said. “I hope we can have even more winners in the future.”

The official award will be given March 2. Results of the Future New and Novel categories will be announced on March 17 through National Notification. Submissions for the 2015 awards will open this September.