Povodom obilježavanja 240 godina školstva u Mrkoplju, Osnovna škola Mrkopalj raspisala je literarni natječaj na engleskom jeziku pod nazivom “A School That Grows With Time”. Na natječaj su pravo sudjelovanja imali učenici 7. i 8. razreda osnovnih škola s područja Gorskog kotara, a pristigli radovi pokazali su iznimnu kreativnost, jezičnu vještinu i zrelost mladih autora.
S ponosom objavljujemo da su naše učenice ostvarile izvrstan uspjeh u konkurenciji brojnih radova. Prvo mjesto osvojila je učenica 8. razreda Lara Radošević s literarnim radom “The Bell”, koji se ističe iznimnom kreativnošću i zrelim promišljanjem o odrastanju: kroz motiv školskog zvona autorica na dojmljiv način povezuje niz sjećanja i emocija, pokazujući kako isti zvuk s vremenom dobiva nova značenja, od nesigurnosti, preko olakšanja, do ponosa i osobnog rasta.
Drugo mjesto pripalo je učenici 8. razreda Angelici Naglić za rad “Echoes in Endless Rooms”, koji donosi originalnu i maštovitu metaforu škole kao beskonačnog prostora ispunjenog idejama: kroz slojevitu i simboličnu priču autorica prikazuje rast znanja i misli, ali i njihovu složenost, stvarajući snažnu sliku škole koja se neprestano mijenja, širi i na kraju suočava s vlastitim granicama.
Prema odluci stručnog povjerenstva, tri najbolja rada u kategoriji 7. i 8. razreda nagrađena su.
Naše nagrađene učenice pozvane su na svečanu dodjelu nagrada koja će se održati u listopadu 2026. godine u sklopu proslave Dana škole u Mrkoplju.
Čestitamo Lari i Angelici na iznimnom uspjehu te im želimo još mnogo kreativnih ostvarenja u budućnosti!
Njihove nagrađene radove možete pročitati u nastavku.
The Bell
The bell rang.
It wasn’t quieter. Or louder. It didn’t last too long, and the ring wasn’t too short either. Yet it still felt different.
Around me, my classmates rushed out. Some fast, some slow, some probably already out of the school. But I stood
still and listened. It was never really just a bell to me.
A distant and faint memory slipped into my mind.
It was a different classroom. The desks were smaller, and unlike now, I sat in the first row. Along with all my
classmates, I tried hard not to look too much at the clock. The bell rang. I remember jumping slightly, my pencil
nearly slipping out my fingers. Everyone got up, shoving their stuff into their bags almost carelessly. They moved
with a confidence that made them seem they knew where they were going, so I followed, silently.
Back then, the bell meant uncertainty.
Then, the memory shifted.
A test I couldn’t quite remember the contents of. It was the kind of test where the air simply felt loaded with some
kind of heaviness or tension. I remember being stuck on a multiple choice question, looking at it like it might just
answer itself out of pity. Then, from the desk next to me, I caught a small glance and a smile from my classmate. It
wasn’t mocking, nor was it rude, rather shared. It felt like we both knew how bad the scores were going to be. The
air didn’t feel as heavy at that moment.
The bell rang, snapping me out of my thoughts. Pencils dropped, papers were being turned in, and students were
whispering to each other whilst walking out. I could tell some were worried, but some just didn’t care.
At that time, the bell meant relief.
Another memory followed, albeit a little clearer than the rest.
A paper was handed back to me. My name was at the top, the score circled in red. It wasn’t perfect, but it was
much higher than I had expected it to be. I remember feeling relieved. Some of my classmates got bad scores,
some better, but it wasn’t so bad after all.
The bell rang again, yet I barely noticed it, following my classmates out of the classroom with a sense of familiarity.
In that moment, the bell meant pride.
A rush of memories flooded my mind. Some were fuzzy, some clear. But they were all tied to one simple sound.
A rainy day, where the bell rang, but we stayed in the classroom, talking louder than we should have, sharing
stories that felt important at the time. Someone was laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, and the rest of us
followed without really knowing why.
A moment in the main hall, just before the bell, when my friend told me it would be okay. For some reason, I
believed it.
A class where I stared out the window, not listening, thinking about everything except the lesson, and then the bell
rang, pulling me back, reminding me that time had moved even when I hadn’t noticed.
Each time, the bell sounded the same.
But it never held the same meaning.
I blinked, snapping out of my thoughts, back into reality. Everything was still on my mind.
For others, the bell was just a marker of time. Just noise. Something that signalled the end of a period, that
signalled to leave.
But for me, it held a hundred different memories.
The nervous silence of that first test. The almost-laughter shared across desks. The quiet pride of a number written
in red ink. The voices, the pauses, the moments that didn’t seem important then, but somehow stayed.
The bell had never changed.
But I had, slowly, and without realizing it.
I stood up, slinging my bag over my shoulder. The bag didn’t feel as heavy. Not because something was missing,
but rather because I now knew how to carry that weight.
At the door, I paused, just for a second.
The noise of the hallway rushed past me, but underneath it, I could still hear it. The echo of the bell, not as a sharp
ring, but as something softer, almost familiar.
And I understood.
Things change. The classrooms, the people, the versions of ourselves we leave behind. But some things stay, not as
they were, but as something we carry forward.
For some, it will always be just a bell.
But for me, it will always be the sound of small moments that somehow became everything.
I stepped outside, into the light, into something new.
And this time, I didn’t need the bell to tell me where to go.
Lara Radošević, 8. razred
Echoes in Endless Rooms
Once upon a time, in a small town, there stood a school that expanded with knowledge. In the beginning, the school was small, it only had a few rooms, but with time, it expanded. The walls were plain, the windows simple, and the silence inside was calm. Every thought, assumption or idea in that school formed into a room of a different size, based on the context. Some ideas barely filled a corner, while others made massive rooms. Each room was arranged to reflect those ideas – through artwork, poems, research, projects, experiments, studies, and more, all layered and rearranged over time. Some rooms were forbidden due to the ideas within them being too advanced to be understood. They were never locked, but also never entered.
With time, the school turned into a giant piece of art. From the outside it looked like architecture – thick walls, tall windows, and a structure to admire. But, on the inside, it was something completely different. The hallways were endless, widening and splitting without any sign that the end was near; each had countless doors, some polished and inviting, others worn and barely noticeable. The air carried a quiet hum, as if every idea ever formed still lingered in the walls. Some doors led to classrooms filled with motion and discussion, others to staircases spiraling upward or downward, only to open even more hallways that seemed both familiar and entirely new. No map could capture it, and no two journeys through it were ever the same.
The school was hard to ignore. It caught the attention of passersby, not just because of its size, but because of the strange sense that it was always changing, always becoming something more. Curiously, they entered and started having their own thoughts. This kept on happening, making the school more crowded than it ever was. Voices overlapped, footsteps echoed, and the once quiet structure filled with constant movement. Some wandered mindlessly, opening doors at random, laughing at what they found inside, treating the rooms like curiosities rather than meanings. Others searched with intention, returning to the same rooms, adding to them, shaping them until they grew larger and more complex, layering ideas upon ideas. As more people stepped inside, more rooms appeared. At first, no one noticed. A door that hadn’t been there before would simply appear. A wall would stretch slightly farther than it used to. A staircase would gain an extra step, then another, then another. Those who walked with purpose rarely questioned it; they assumed they had missed something, taken a wrong turn or forgotten the layout, never realizing the building itself was changing around them.
A lot of thoughts and curiosity later, the school finally collapsed under its own weight. It couldn’t handle the pressure of knowing. Every question asked within its walls had settled into it, every step pressing deeper into its structure, leaving an invisible strain behind. The hallways, once endless, began to fall onto themselves, narrowing and twisting in ways that no longer made sense. Doors bent, leading nowhere. The air grew heavy, thick with the weight of everything that had been thought but never resolved. Then, without warning, the school caved inward; rooms crushing rooms, ideas collapsing into one another, until nothing remained but a quiet, empty space where it once stood, as if it had never existed at all.
Angelica Naglić, 8. razred
