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Plano ISD students win state bus safety poster contest awards
By Kim Nguyen, Staff Writer
Two young Plano ISD students will travel to Austin Oct. 20 to attend a ceremony celebrating the students’ award-winning art depicting bus safety.
Governor Rick Perry will be in attendance at the ceremony to announce Oct. 20-24 as National Bus Safety Week and honor Sharon Jiang and Kalifornia “Kali” Bolter for their award-winning artwork.
This year’s bus safety poster contest theme was “Avoid Harm: Obey the Stop Arm,” referring to the stop sign that pivots out of the driver’s side of the bus to notify surrounding drivers of the children loading and unloading the bus.
“Everybody’s artwork was really good and different,” she said. “We all worked really hard on our posters.”
Mitchell Elementary School art teacher Tracy Evans thought the poster contest was a convenient way to emphasize the importance of bus safety to the students.
“The students are not always in our plain sight for us to ensure their safety,” she said. “Everyone’s a bus-rider and it’s very assuring to know that these kids are aware of and can understand bus safety.”
Evans decided to submit artwork from all of the second and third grades to the poster contest. The artwork done by the second grade students was submitted in the K-2 category and the third-grade art was submitted to the Grade 3-5 category. In the end, Evans sent and entered more than 200 posters from Mitchell Elementary to the bus safety poster contest.
“We talked about the theme and the various requirements of the contest, and then I let them take on their own interpretations,” Evans said. “I am amazed that all of the students took on a very serious attitude and worked very hard on their posters.”
Of the 200-plus submissions from Mitchell Elementary, three students earned top rankings in the Plano category. Jiang’s artwork moved onto the regional competition for earning first place.
“Sharon has a real talent and gift for art, so it doesn’t surprise me that she won,” Evans said. “And I am enormously proud of all of my students for giving it their best.”
After more than half a year since her art was originally submitted to the contest, Jiang and her family found out about her award in March.
“I actually kind of forgot about the contest, but in the back of my mind I was very anxious,” the third-grader said. “My parents were so happy for me when we found out!”
Evans hopes to incorporate the National School Bus Safety Poster Contest into the curriculum every year.
“It was such a great success, especially with three of our own placed in the regional competition,” she said. “Now the students see the potential success from their hard work and are excited to try again.”
Bolter was a fifth-grader at Hickey Elementary School when she entered the contest. An avid artist, Bolter likes to draw in her free time.
Bolter’s former art teacher, Silvia Ibarra, had opened the poster contest to all the students at Hickey. Ibarra then chose the top 50 pieces of artwork to submit to the contest.
“Kali is just an all-around exceptional student,” Ibarra said. “Whether it’s academics, sports, arts or anything thing else, she’ll excel because she tries so hard to do well.”
Ibarra said Bolter’s poster was one of the pieces to advance to the contest because it had met all the requirements.
“It was tough to narrow it down, but Kali’s artwork had a lot color throughout the poster, good balance and good composition,” she said. “Not just Kali, but the other 50 or so students who also had art submitted.”
“I ended up being the only fifth grader to enter,” Bolter said with pride.
Bolter’s prize-winning artwork featured a landscape of trees, houses and roads with a pair of students waiting at the bus stop.
“I think my parents are most excited though,” Bolter said. “They’re the ones calling everybody in my family to brag about it.”
Hendrick Middle School art teacher Brian Magnuson has yet to teach the 11-year-old Bolter, who was transferred to Hendrick after leaving Hickey Elementary, but he is already impressed with his future student and can already see that Bolter has the potential to do great things.
“Every year I am always amazed with how talented Plano students are,” Magnuson said. “The talent level is phenomenal and the district does great things to help their students excel.”
In his 10 years of teaching art for various school districts, Magnuson thinks the Plano ISD keeps the highest standard for students in the fine arts and visual arts program.
With the artwork and contest complete, Jiang and Bolter are now ready for their trip to Austin.
“A lot of my classmates are jealous that I will be missing a day of school to meet the Governor of Texas,” Jiang said. “But I don’t think it’s such a big deal.”
For having won a national contest, Bolter is also keeping a very calm attitude about the ceremony in Austin.
“I told my friend that he should’ve entered in the contest too, he’s a good artist but he didn’t want to,” she said. “When I found out I had won, I told him, ‘I told you so!’”
Contact Kim Nguyen at knguyen@acnpapers.com
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