Kendall Grabinski’s pencil glided gracefully over the paper as she wrote “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
The cursive letters have the perfect shape and slant — so perfect that the Lake-Lehman School District fifth grader is a national champion.
“I think that's kind of cool, and that's kind of amazing that I won,” the 10-year-old said.
The 34th annual Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest named Kendall the fifth grade grand national champion this month. Kendall is the third national champion from Lehman-Jackson Elementary School since 2020.
Aubriella Wojnarski won for her cursive handwriting while a fourth grader in 2020, and Ainsley Vitkoski won in the print category as a first grader in 2023.
Kendall, who hopes to be a veterinarian or an Olympic gymnast, will receive a trophy and $500 from Zaner-Bloser. The school receives a $1,000 product voucher from the company.
Lehman-Jackson holds an in-school contest first, and then selects the top entry to advance in the curriculum company’s annual contest. Kendall’s entry was among 2,260 for the national contest this year. Each student writes the sentence about the brown fox, since it includes every letter of the alphabet.
“A lot of districts have moved away from cursive writing, and our district has not. So I think that's definitely given us an advantage for the contest,” said Kendall’s teacher, Jen Welby.
Students first learn cursive in the spring of second grade, and then practice it in third grade.
“It's kind of like a rite of passage of becoming a big kid when you can finally write in script,” Welby said.
Though Kendall has award-winning cursive handwriting, Welby didn’t realize her student’s skill. Kendall usually prints in class.
“When they're in the competition, everyone's in it to win it, and that good handwriting really came out,” Welby said. “Her cursive really came out. … I didn't even know she knew how to do it so well.”
Cursive not required in Pennsylvania
Many schools have either eliminated or shortened handwriting lessons, spending more time in core subject areas as students rely more on technology.
As of 2024, 24 states require cursive to be taught in schools, according to My Cursive, a site that offers handwriting resources. Pennsylvania does not require it, but several legislators, including Rep. Dane Watro (R-Luzerne/Schuylkill), have proposed changing that. They’ve highlighted cognitive advantages found in research, fine motor skills development and having the ability to read historic texts.
“While computers are great, it's not the only way that students at this level learn. We do work on a lot of the fine motor coordination,” Welby said. “I think they take pride in their work when they can write it out. It's a great study strategy, being able to write out their notes, as opposed to always typing. It's just another way of learning.”
Regional winner in East Stroudsburg
Carson Che, a first grade student at Notre Dame Elementary School in East Stroudsburg, also received recognition from Zaner-Bloser.
The company named him the first grade regional champion for the Northeast for his printing skills.
“Carson is a very bright young student. He's very quiet, very focused. He participates a lot in class,” said his teacher, Michelle Kusienski.
First-grade students in the school, part of the Diocese of Scranton, spend 15 to 20 minutes per day working on handwriting, beyond the normal writing that takes place for other subjects, she said.
