LOWER POTTSGROVE >> Pottsgrove High School freshman David Rabinowitz is in very elite company.
He is one of only seven freshman nationwide to earn a perfect score in this round of the year-long WordWright Challenge, a competition that requires close reading and analysis of different kinds of poetry and prose.
“I didn’t expect to get a perfect score,” said Rabinowitz, whose father Rick is a member of the Pottsgrove School Board.
It’s the second time a Pottsgrove student has earned a perfect score in the competition.
In 2014, senior Abby Hudock was one of only four high school seniors to earn a perfect score in the competition.
The texts that students must analyze for the WordWright challenge can range from short fiction by Eudora Welty or John Updike to poetry as old as Shakespeare’s or as recent as Margaret Atwood’s.
More than 64,000 high school students from 48 states entered the meet.
The competition is held four times a year and in December, Rabinowitz was also mentioned as being among the highest scorers.
The text he and the other ninth- and tenth-graders across the nation had to analyze this time was an essay by Lance Morrow, an American essayist and writer, chiefly for Time Magazine who has won a National Magazine Award for essays and criticism.
The piece compared violent games Morrow played as a child with violence committed by children, “like the school shootings in Columbine,” Rabinowitz recalled. “It was kind of heavy.”
The freshman said he is “a big reader” and said currently he is reading a lot of George Orwell. He singled out the essay, “Politics and the English Language” as a particular favorite.
He also singled out Pottsgrove Middle School gifted teacher Deb Frasca and high school English teacher Pat Carroll “for shout-outs,” noting their efforts in particular had helped prepare him for the competition.
But Rabinowitz was not the only Pottsgrove student recognized.
Sophomore Chloe Tice and seniors Brenna Dugan and Diane DiLabrio “all achieved outstanding results as well,” according to a statement issued by the contest organizers.
In addition to being a competition, WordWright is also a classroom activity and classes are encouraged to talk about the texts and the answers to the multiple choice questions under the program, which is coordinated in Pottsgrove by Todd Kelly.
The students will participate in one more meet over the coming months, and medals and certificates will be awarded in June to those who have achieved and/or improved the most over the course of the year.
