Reflections Program
Theme for 2022-23 is "Show Your Voice"
The national PTA believes all children deserve a quality arts education and inspires students to reflect on a specific theme and create original art. Each year, students in grades K through 12 are recognized for bringing the theme to life through any of the six categories: Dance Choreography, Film Production, Literature, Music Composition, Photography and Visual Arts. The Special Artist division is a non-judged division for qualifying students. Awards are given at the local, state, and national levels. Students may enter as many entries as they’d like, in one or more of the six categories.
Students will submit their artwork to their school PTA for initial judging. Please reach out to your local PTA unit to confirm deadlines and obtain any required applications to enter.
Michigan PTA Reflections deadline and resources
Entry Form
Advancing Entries to the State Reflections Contest
Entries advancing to State Reflections are due by Saturday, January 14th, 2023 11:59 pm EST.
District/Council PTAs can advance 4 entries from each age group/category to the State Reflections contest.
Unit PTAs without a district/council PTA can advance 2 entries from each age group/category to the State Reflections contest.
Make sure your PTA has all its standards of affiliations in place!
Two ways to advance...
1. Submit via the Student Entry Portal. The link to the portal will be posted here and on Facebook when the portal opens.
- Any volunteer with the entry paperwork (signed student entry form and any applicable consent forms) can enter the entry into the portal
- When the portal asks for the PTA contact information (name and email) that should be the PTA person who will field any questions the Michigan Reflections Committee has while processing the entry
- When you upload the entry file into the portal, be sure to upload the file that had corrections applied to it (if any). For example, if the local PTA Reflections chairperson received a film file that contained the student's name but a revised film file was used for blind judging purposes, then we want the revised film file. No need for us to redo the work you've already done!
- When uploading the photo file, please upload the original photo file that the student would have sent to print, not a photo of a printed picture. The original photo file gives the student the best chance since it's difficult for a judge to know if lighting choices were purposeful by the student or the result of a Reflections chairperson trying to create an electronic photo file for the portal
- If you would like the Michigan Reflections Committee to confirm that we can see in the portal all the entries you submitted, please email that list to [email protected]
2. New this year, we are accepting entries advancing to the state without the use of the portal. So if you want to share the entries with [email protected], we need additional files from you
If you choose to share with us your entry files, you need to share for every entry:
- a signed student entry form (if the student entry form was collected digitally via a Google form, then this is an individual entry's google form printed to pdf - click here for a sample google form individual student entry form
- all applicable consent forms for the entry
- the entry file (1 photo for 2D art, 3 photos for 3D art, original photo file, pdf of literature file, dance video, music audio file, pdf of music narrative if required, or film video)
You also NEED to share with [email protected] a spreadsheet that contains all the information you find on the student entry form.
Find your Reflections Chairperson