Junior Asmaa Khan has been selected for a 2024 Achievement Award in Writing, given by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Khan received an ‘Excellent’ recognition for her essay.

The NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing is a school-based writing program established in 1957 to encourage high school students to write and to recognize some of the best student writers in the nation. Only students who are juniors are able to participate.

Khan is the first Niles North student to win an award from this program in nearly 10 years. This year’s prompt was about the influx of identity.

“I wrote my essay on self-identity and kind of how I perceive myself versus my different groups people perceive me,” Khan said. “Kind of [how] my teachers and my friends have a different view of me than my parents. And kind of about how I struggle with accepting my individuality if there isn’t anyone else around me.”

English teacher Ashely Amelianovich helped Khan edit her essay.

“[Asmaa] is very thoughtful. I really enjoyed working with her one-on-one on this essay, and I don’t often have the opportunity to do that because we’re often doing things whole class,” Amelianovich said. “She was just very, very in touch with what she wanted to say. She just seemed to be very self-aware of who she is as a person and how other people see her as a person and how she has changed as a person. And I think that a makes her a good writer, but also a very good student, which helped her excel at this essay.”

This year, schools nominated 633 students. From the United States, students were nominated from 44 states, as well as Guam and Washington, D.C. Internationally, teachers nominated students from Canada, Greece, Jordan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Two to three independent judges evaluated each submission holistically on content, purpose, audience, tone, word choice, organization, development, and style.

For more information about the NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing, including past winners, see https://ncte.org/awards/achievement-awards-in-writing/.