The write stuff: Sacred Heart student receives national recognition for penmanship
Jun. 3—The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The phrase, more than likely, is one of little significance to the majority of today's younger generations. However, those attending elementary school when cursive handwriting was still a part of the required curriculum, can quickly recognize the sentence for its unique characteristic of containing each letter of the english alphabet, and hours spent refining their skills by rewriting the words. While digital messaging has caused a decline in the necessity for penmanship, the art is not completely lost.
In fact, Azlynn Florence, a fifth grade student at Sacred Heart Elementary School, recently received national recognition for her handwriting technique, when she was named as a semifinalist in the 32nd annual Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting contest.
As the longest running and best known contest of its kind, more than 80,000 kindergarten through eighth grade students from 49 states compete in the Zaner-Bloser contest each year. Competition begins at the school level before narrowing the field of competition at the state level. Once a student has made their way to the national stage, judges select a grand national and a semifinalist for each grade level based on the shape, size, spacing and slant the letters. Beginning in the third grade, students must swap from traditional print lettering to cursive.
"This means Azlynn had the second best cursive handwriting among all of the 5th grade entries from across the country," Wendy Schwantes, media contact for Zane-Bloser, said in an email sent to The Times.
Winners were announced on May 18, but Florence wasn't made aware of her accomplishment until the following week when the staff at Sacred Heart made the surprise announcement during the school's awards ceremony.
"When they said my name and told me I got second place I was like excited, but I wasn't that surprised because I thought I might have gotten it," she said.
If the fledgling penman sounds confident, it is because she is. While many schools have abandoned the requirement for students to learn cursive, handwriting remains a part of the required curriculum at Sacred Heart, and Florence has been receiving compliments from her teachers for nearly as long as she has been able to hold a pencil.
"I do get complimented by my teachers about it. One time the teacher who grades our handwriting came up to me and said 'Wow, everyone has good handwriting, but yours really stands out,'" she said.
One of the secrets to her success, Florence said, is patience. She said this is where she feels as though the majority of people, mostly the boys in her class, struggle the most.
"The boys in our class don't really have good handwriting because they want to finish their schoolwork in a hurry. They always want to be the first one's done," she said.
Florence admits to being competitive by nature and is planning to end her career at Sacred Heart by bringing home a grand prize trophy next year.
"I feel like if I placed second then I can place first."
