Yesterday, second graders held the annual Ogre Awards, in which 88 students celebrated the characters of their favorite folk tales from all over the world at a special ceremony. Students spent the previous months reading stories from various parts of the world, including China, India and Norway. Their favorite characters from each of these stories were then given special awards in a variety of categories at the show. Students from each grade 2 homeroom also dressed up as characters from the stories they’d read.
Each Ogre Awards also honors members of the Harker community. This year the show recognized grade 2 teachers Ali Bo, Ayesha Tahir, Kerri Clifford and Sejal Mehta.
The annual Ogre Awards, held yesterday at the Bucknall gym, saw 88 second graders in costume as literary archetypes from various cultures. In the months leading up to the show, students had been reading and discussing stories from many different countries, including Indonesia, Ecuador and Russia. Each year the Ogre Awards celebrate these stories by giving awards in a number of categories to the students’ favorite characters.
This year’s version of the long-running Harker tradition told the story of folktale characters leaping from the pages of an open book and discovering what it would be like to exist in other characters’ stories. The show also recognized longtime delivery driver Rick Samble for his nearly 20 years of service to the Harker libraries, and featured a guest appearance by Head of School Brian Yager, who played the part of Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System!