Smith Jewish Academy is celebrating a wonderful creative achievement: Sylvia, a current fourth grader, has been selected as a winner in the 2025 St. Louis Park Sidewalk Poetry Contest! Her poem, written last spring during the third-grade poetry unit, has been permanently stamped into a city sidewalk for the community to enjoy.
Sylvia’s poem, lovingly titled Untitled (Birds fly high), stood out among 122 submissions from more than 90 local artists — the highest number of entries the contest has ever received. The city’s judging panel described her poem as deeply resonant, and it is engraved on Cedar Lake Road in front of Park Spanish Immersion, on the north side of the street in the Cedar Manor neighborhood.
Here is Sylvia’s winning poem:
Birds fly high
Flowers bloom low,
Some grow fast
Others grow slow,
You may be happy
I’ll be blue,
I love me for me
But most importantly,
I love you for you.
A Celebration of the Creative Work of All Third Graders
The recognition is especially meaningful because every third grader at Smith entered the contest as part of their spring poetry unit. “It’s such a sweet recognition of Sylvia’s creativity,” said teacher Sarah Glassman, who guided students through several weeks of reading, studying, and writing poetry.
During the unit, students explored a wide range of poetic forms — list poems, sensory poems, borrowed poems, mystery poems, and short narrative poems. One class favorite was the mystery poem, where students used imagery and figurative language to describe an object and classmates guessed what it was. A special visitor, a therapy bunny, helped the students incorporate sensory details into their writing, describing how things feel, sound, and even smell. Throughout the unit, students built a strong poetry vocabulary, learning terms such as repetition, imagery, metaphor, simile, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and couplet.
Students also memorized Dreams by Langston Hughes, giving them a feel for rhythm, phrasing, and the musicality of language. By the end of the unit, each student had written multiple original poems — one of which was submitted to the Sidewalk Poetry Contest and also included in a class poetry book created by Ms. Glassman.
While Sylvia learned about her win over the summer, the entire Smith community is now thrilled to celebrate her accomplishment.
A Lasting Mark on the Community
Having a poem engraved into a sidewalk is a rare and special honor — one that ensures Sylvia’s words of kindness, appreciation, and love will be read by neighbors, students, families, and passersby for years to come.
Mazal tov to Sylvia on this extraordinary recognition, and yasher koach to the whole class for their creativity, craftsmanship, and joy for language. We can’t wait to take a walk and see Sylvia’s poem in its new home on Cedar Lake Road!