A Paton-Churdan student recently received recognition for her writing skills.

Calleigh Fitzpatrick was one of the recipients of the 2022 Promising Young Writer by the National Council of Teachers of English. The honor is given to eighth grade students to stimulate and recognize writing talents and to emphasize the importance of writing skills. Fitzpatrick says her english teacher selected her to submit stories for consideration under the main theme of boundaries and a classroom theme of global issues, which she chose to write about discrimination. She explains what her discrimination story was about.

“The discrimination one is just the biggest problem going on in my generation. It was a class project. I just did like BLM (Black Lives Matter), and like the LGBTQ+, and just people discriminating against the people in our generation.”     

Fitzpatrick points out why she likes to write.

“I just like writing. It’s just fun to write. It’s not like being on your phone all the time. You just get to use your own mind and just create the stories that you want to create.”

The NCTE represents more than 25,000 teachers across the pre-kindergarten through college spectrum across the country. Fitzpatrick is the daughter of Kevin and Emily.