The first semester of the 2023-24 school year has been a very successful one with numerous activities and awards in our English program. In addition, there are numerous student achievements that we would like to acknowledge. First, we would like to congratulate Maria Oprea for winning the Marie Pick Award for Proficiency in English Writing, Vanessa Wang for winning the Robert MacDonald Award for Excellence in English Literature, and Sarah Jagani for winning the Edna Izzard Award for Proficiency in English and Drama. The students who received the awards for highest marks in their courses were: Katherine Liu (ENG4UE), Hailey Chan (ENG4U), Liv Vanderlinden (EWC4U) and Fatima Kadhum (ENG4C).

We would also like to applaud Sasha Drotenko and Karen Zhou for finishing in fourth and fifth place respectively in the Humber College Literary Review Flash Fiction Contest. In addition we would like to pay tribute to Kate Shahidi for winning the first place prize in the Polar Expressions Publishing Contest with her short story “The Elevator.” As well we want to acknowledge the great turn out for the internationally recognized Advanced Placement English exams, with over seventy students representing RHHS. The results from the 2023 AP English exams were fantastic: nearly one quarter of the seventy participating students received perfect scores on two separate internationally recognized AP English exams and the students’ mean scores were fifteen per cent higher than the Global average.

 In November we kicked off our literacy month celebrations by participating in numerous literacy initiatives including the Richmond Hill Public Library Short Story Contest, the OSSTF Creative Writing Contest for Poetry and Short Fiction, an online Indigenous storytelling conference with FNMIEAO, our first Poetry in the Park event of the year, and our first Open Mic Poetry Slam in the library. 

On Tuesday, December 5th, 2023, the Slam Poetry Club hosted the RHHS Slam Poetry Championship after school in the library. The club invited all RHHS students to come out and perform an original poem, offering them an opportunity to share their thoughts and voices with their peers, teachers, and administrators. A number of remarkable performances filled the afternoon of verse, showcasing the literary and creative talents of RHHS students. Although each student's performance was moving and memorable, the following were the top four student performers who will form the 2024 RHHS Slam Poetry Team that will be competing in the YRDSB Slam Poetry Competitions scheduled for this coming spring: Darcy Locke, Roxana Rafiei, Michelle Borisenko, and Shireen Dalla. For any students interested in poetry or spoken word performance, the Slam Poetry Club meets after school every Tuesday in Room 1062.

Over 200 English students attended several different creative writing workshops this past year. RHHS alumnus Pardis Aliakbarkhani inspired us with a selection of readings from her three books A Drink of the Caspian, The Siren, and For Pomegranates as well as leading us through a poetry workshop focused on self-empowerment. At the Festival of Literary Diversity students explored tips and techniques for creating incredible characters with Daniel Aleman. They learned about the creative craft involved in writing a short story in addition to the details that go into publishing a collection from Jesmeen Kaur Deo. Elamin Abdelmahmoud joined our class to discuss what it's like to write a memoir and what it takes to build a career as a successful journalist. Indigenous author Cheri Dimaline mesmerized students with the real life stories behind her national bestseller Empire of the Wild. We were also fortunate enough to meet with stage and screen actors John Jarvis and Marvin Karon for a workshop on writing dramatic monologues. These were all wonderful opportunities which enabled our students to explore the immense diversity in the Canadian publishing industry and to ask questions about the various pathways to success in the writing profession.

If you have any questions regarding the English program at RHHS please feel free to contact the English department at any time. Take care and have a wonderful winter.