At
a recent breakfast honoring essay writers, the man that organized the event
mentioned when he saw the first of the many Bios winners that morning,
"Here is the first student from Bios Christian Academy, the Alabama of
essay writing." Alabama being the university that won the first college
championship this past year. Well, for a larger essay contest, one of the
largest in the country, Grand Canyon State Games, we did even better, enjoying
over twenty-five percent of the first through twelfth grade winners.
Out
of 4,264 essays submitted, our teachers and students captured four of twelve
gold medals, three of thirteen silver, two bronze, and five honorable mention
awards.
While
it is a lot of fun to win so many awards, one of the main reasons for writing
the essays is to write for different audiences. Those different audiences are
of course the judges. The people who so generously give of their time are from
all walks of life. Engineers, school teachers, retired English teachers, city
officials such as mayors and police chiefs, cowboys, college students and their
professors, and librarians are some of the different audiences we write for.
A
problem with writing instruction I would observe over the years is the
inclination of teachers to favor the writing styles of students which wrote in
a manner they liked. I would do the same thing. When instructing my own
children, many years ago, I would definitely favor the writing of my older son
over the younger. We shared a similar sense of humor. But because both of their
essays were sent in to the contests, the younger son won a few contests too. Writing for different audiences provided
different writing purposes as well as different writing likes.
Congratulations
to all the teachers, students, and parents for a job well done.
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