On Tuesday March 8th, two Level 2 ESL students represented Edison High School at the state semifinal Poetry Out Loud competition.  Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation competition.  Students choose two poems from an anthology, memorize them, and then compete at a school, regional, state, and national level.  Abdifatah Ismail (9th grade) and Ximena Castillo (9th grade) competed first in their classrooms where all ESL students in levels 1 and 2 chose poems to recite in front of the class.  After winning their classroom competition, they moved on to the next competition performing against the 8 other students who won from all the other level 1 and 2 classes.  In December, judges from the district office, as well as teachers from Edison, rated the 8 students’ performances and Abdifatah and Ximena were chosen to move on to the semifinal round.  In the semifinals, held at Open Book in downtown Minneapolis, Ximena and Abdifatah competed against finalists from 6 other high schools in the metro area.  Although neither student moved on to the final round for state champion (they competed against the state champion from 2014!) they both were an excellent example of the hard work and bravery exemplified by our ESL students at Edison.