Cowboy poets of Durham Intermediate School

Creativity may be a natural attribute and not a learned skill, but the fifth grade teaching team at Durham Intermediate School in Southlake has learned how to successfully spur the creative juices that mark their students’ success in writing.

Fifth grade language arts teachers Patty Christensen, Kim Fritz, Evangeline Gant and Shannon Shabanaj each year assign their classes the task of writing a cowboy poem to enter in the Red Steagall Young Writers Cowboy Poetry Contest. Their students have been enormously successful, capturing six of the 10 finalist spots for the past three years. This year’s finalists were Tariq Gordon, Tyler Spanos, Ryan Duffy, Connor Henrickson, Caroline Kinnamore and Zach Ellis.