Cursive champ: Student at South Bend's Corpus Christi wins national handwriting honor
SOUTH BEND — Twice a month, Lauren Quiroz, a seventh-grader at Corpus Christi School, sits down and practices cursive handwriting.
It’s faster than print, she says, “because the letters connect.”
She won a school award last year for her writing. It reinforced her skill at cursive, and it pushed her to keep practicing.
Practice has paid off for Lauren, who was recently named the champion of her grade level in a national handwriting contest.
More than 250,000 students in kindergarten through eighth grade competed in the 2019 Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest, and Lauren was among nine grand national grade-level champions.
She will be honored at a school assembly today and will take home a trophy and $500 check. Corpus Christi, a K-8 Catholic school, will receive $500 worth of educational materials from Zaner-Bloser, a Columbus, Ohio-based publisher that started the annual handwriting contest in 1991.
Contestants are enrolled in public and private schools that use the publisher’s education materials. They write a required sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” because it contains every letter in the alphabet. They also explain what they like best about handwriting.
In her entry, Lauren wrote that using proper handwriting ensures her “writing will not be misinterpreted. This is important because it shows I am professional and take pride in my work.”
Lauren hopes to inspire other students to practice and work hard.
“If you want to achieve a goal, you need to set yourself a limit and strive toward that limit,” she said. “And once you achieve it, don’t stop and keep going.”
Trisha Perry, Lauren’s language arts teacher, said her students practice cursive once a month.
“I give them a sentence that makes them use all the letters of the alphabet,” she said. “They’re exasperated by the fact they have to do it, but to see someone like Lauren win reaffirms that it is actually important.”
Lauren’s award comes at a time when many schools no longer teach cursive in today’s electronic age.
In fact, cursive was removed from federal Common Core standards in 2010 and appeared to be making an exit from public education. But it has been making a comeback in recent years, as states such as Ohio, Illinois, Texas and South Carolina have passed laws requiring elementary schools to teach cursive writing.
Perry said Corpus Christi emphasizes cursive for a good reason.
It remains important to have a professional signature, she said, and cursive handwriting is efficient.
“In cursive, you don’t pick up the pen,” she said, “until the word is done.”
