Forest Hills — Every year, Forest Hills Public Schools encourages students, staff and families to participate in its MLK Day Challenge.
This year, participants were asked to respond to a prompt inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s belief that every voice matters. They were asked to complete one or more of the following statements: “I helped someone feel heard when ..,” “I felt heard when …” or “Feeling heard is important because …” Submissions could be in any format, including sentences, poems, artwork, videos, posters, essays or drawings.
Winners were announced on Jan. 19, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Below is a sampling of winners from each Forest Hills attendance area: Northern, Central and Eastern. The video includes all winners.
Eastern High School
Siddhant Sinha, ninth grade
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man who influenced and helped other black Americans to achieve liberty against racist acts such as the Jim Crow Laws. Although he was jailed many times by white supremacists, he continued to fight for the equality of African Americans. Even today, we see him as a representation of how you can fight without using violence for what is right. It is evident that he was the voice of black Americans to make them heard.
One time, I helped someone feel heard was when one of my peers kept getting talked over during a school project. I paused the conversation and intrigued the other people to go back to what he was saying. It turned out to be very insightful. Using his constructive feedback, we pursued work on our project and ended up getting an A. It impacted them in a positive way by making them feel heard and not like an invisible voice. It also impacted me because his perceptive thinking helped us to do good on the assignment.
Central High School
Kate Carpenter, ninth grade
Between Bells
Pencils lead to scratching,
Nails biting,
Clock keeps ticking.
Ticking.
Ticking.
Ticking down to lab time,
6th hour biology.
To thoughts I don’t say,
Sentence swallowed.
Questions folded so small,
Hidden away in my mouth.
And to those bleak seconds of productivity,
Before
We
Explode.
Exploding with things our peers,
Bent over microscopes,
Assumed to be trivial drama-
That of two superficial teen girls.
The supposed venom between whispers,
while I balanced a quiet collapse,
behind these teeth.
I made it look light,
Carried silence like a favor.
So only she knew
it hung like steel from my shoes.
Hallway eyes.
Hands swing awkwardly,
From side to side.
These sweaty palms,
To wipe away tears of insomnia-ridden nights
Your 100$ jeans
will never sit right.
Her prudent remarks,
to my shellshocked world.
Along with the worlds I never swallowed,
Was the melatonin,
I so desperately needed.
Those folded thoughts,
hidden on my tongue,
unfolded and flipped over,
unwrapped and ripped open,
By her listening ears.
Those deep, risky notions,
the ones fear for being read too closely,
and never put into motion.
Finally spoken.
Between blank notes and whispers,
The steel melted off these shoulders.
Dripping…
Dripping…
Dripping onto the cold linoleum floors.
That class, that day was left,
Lighter –
Because you can’t truly float without opening up.
Thank you, Lindsey.
Northern Hills Middle School
Lauren Sheahan, eighth grade
Kindness Matters
In peer-to-peer PE,
I learned along the way
Kindness matters more
than winning the play.
Dominic joined in,
smiling, ready to start,
inclusion showed me
the strength of the heart,
Between games his singing rang clear,
a happy, brave voice that brought everyone near.
With teamwork and patience,
we played side by side,
making space for belonging
and keeping our heads held high,
with Husky pride.
Read more from Forest Hills:
• Forest Hills students take top spots in Write Michigan contest
• Surreal moment’ as junior takes top spot in graphic novel contest
