One Greenhill student won the Gold Award, six students won the Silver Award, and seven students received an Honorable Mention in the 2026 Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools (CLASS) 22nd Annual National Chinese Essay Contest hosted during November.
This year’s contest theme was “AI and Me,” which received over 700 essay submissions from students across the United States.
Within that theme, the competition was divided into three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. The beginner level, competed by sixth through eighth graders, had the prompt “If I had an AI Best Friend.” The intermediate level, competed by ninth through 12th graders, faced the prompt of “A Day with AI in my life.” Competitors in the advanced division were tasked with writing an essay on “AI Through My Eyes.”
“I wrote about how we interact with AI in our life, and how that affects other stuff we do, how that affects our thinking, how that affects our daily experience,” freshman Silver Award winner Adam Tawil said.
The contest is divided into two different groups based on if the students grew up speaking Chinese: the Heritage Group and the Immersion Group.
Typically, the topics are centered around Chinese culture, however, this year, the prompt focused on the modern world and how AI is affecting students.
“It was a different type of topic which interested me,” freshman Honorable Mention Maahi Varma said.
Teachers encouraged students to submit to the contest for the practice of writing essays in Chinese, not in hopes of a prize.
“If you got the prize, that’s by-product, the secondary,” Middle School Chinese teacher Xiaoling Zhang said. “The experience is really good.”
Even though students were not required to submit to the competition, the students had to write a draft for an in-class assignment. Teachers encouraged them to submit their revised drafts to the contest.
“My teacher [Middle and Upper School Chinese Teacher Grace Chwa] was very persistent about us joining,” Varma said. “She sees how capable we are.”
When writing his essay, Tawil said he struggled with fully expressing himself in a foreign language.
“Finding the right vocabulary was a challenge, because our vocabulary is pretty limited at Chinese II,” Tawil said.
Both freshmen gave advice to students planning on participating in the contest in future years.
“Make sure that you have a clear theme, a clear message that you want to send,” Tawil said.
Varma agreed and noted to make sure to draw from your personal life.
“Don’t feel pressure going into it because what the judges look for is authenticity; they really want you to speak true to yourself,” Varma said.
Both students explained that the contest encouraged them to think more deeply about their ideas and how to express them clearly in Chinese.
“Seek a lot of feedback from your teachers because they can really help find the right words to say,” Tawil said.
Adrienne Akintola
GOLD AWARD
Fiona Ou ’31
SILVER AWARD
Garrett Clark ’29
Livia Perel ’31
Josephina Qiu ’26
Adam Tawil ’29
Rebecca Yao ’31
Jayden Zhu ’32
HONORABLE MENTION
Tali Berrelez ’27
Aanya Krishnakumar ’28
Ven Larson ’27
Grace Li ’29
Maahi Varma ’29
Vivian White ’27
Kaitlyn Yoo ’27
