October 24, 2025 is the day that Centennial’s exclusive celebration of National Writing Day makes its annual return. The most well known of these activities is the Advanced Composition students “taking over” of classes with the teacher’s permission.
Among the other traditions are decorating the sidewalk outside the school with poems in chalk, hosting a school-wide haiku competition, and creating flyers with writing prompts.
“We’re gonna descend from above, and share the good news with all of the masses of the power of the creative word,” Advanced Composition teacher Corey O’Brien said.
National Writing Day (NWD) was introduced to Centennial in 2013 by O’Brien. Originally, taking over classes was not part of this celebration; alternatively, the class would “make posters and attach them to wooden stakes… and try to canvas the parking lot with our signs,” O’Brien said.
Advanced Composition puts an emphasis on reaching out of one’s comfort zone. “It’s a risk for juniors and seniors to step in front of a room of their peers and run a 50-minute lesson of activities based on the curriculum of an Algebra class, to do it in a creative writing way,” O’Brien said.
For Advanced Composition students, this class serves as a way to discover and strengthen their relationship with writing.
“[The Advanced Composition class] expressed my passion, I always had that passion.” Mateen Bamizai said, a senior who took the extracurricular his junior year.
There are many reasons for one to write. Bamizai’s reason, he claimed, is “Because I am alive.”
Since it is the students who come up with the lesson plans for NWD, no class is ever operated the same. Each lesson plan is a unique combination of creative writing and the subject of the class the students lead.
Katie Genovese, a Centennial senior, is very familiar with this tradition. “We had to make up a super hero based on a type of force in physics,” Genovese recalled.
This CHS tradition is one the community shows pride for.
“I think knowledge is one of the best weapons humanity has, and the best way to preserve and spread knowledge is to write it,” Genovese stated. “I think writing can very legitimately be the savior of humanity in specific situations.”
