CULLMAN, Ala. – Sacred Heart Elementary School recently became home to five state handwriting champions, including Caroline McBride, who went on to be named the fifth-grade national Grand Champion in the 30th annual Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest held last spring. The school has competed in the contest for 25 years and has a history of students bringing home honors. The school’s state level winners also included:
- Valeria Becerra, first grade
- Jordyn Black, third grade
- Maria Agnello, fourth grade
- Charli Roberson, sixth grade
Principal Shawna Norman recognized McBride before Sacred Heart Church’s congregation during last Sunday’s morning Mass.
The school teaches handwriting like other academic subjects, pointing to several benefits for those who learn cursive script. At Sacred Heart Church, Norman presented a certificate to vice principal and fifth-grade teacher Tracy Holmes, crediting her for the skills she passes on to her students.
Norman said of her school’s emphasis on good handwriting skills, “Sacred Heart School has been teaching handwriting for years, as long as I can remember. And there’s a lot of controversy about handwriting: should we teach it? Should we not teach it? A lot of schools quit teaching it and have brought it back in, but research shows that handwriting is important for many reasons. It develops that artistic side of our brain that reading, writing, math sometimes doesn’t. It also helps with dyslexic students; we have found research that writing letters in cursive helps them to distinguish between d’s and b’s, and p’s and q’s.
“It also helps us link ourselves to the past, to history. Many of our documents from the past are written in cursive, and by teaching writing cursive, we also teach students to read cursive. So it helps them to link to things to the past like our Declaration of Independence, which they may not have been able to read if they didn’t know handwriting.”
For more on Sacred Heart School, visit https://shscullman.com.
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