Students Say the Most Poignant Things

This week, a student, Luis, came in to polish up a short, two or three paragraph scholarship essay. His first paragraph began with the maxim that "giving is better than receiving." As (honestly) ordinary as this idea is, his second paragraph began with a real original thought:

"Our world is in need of generous people."

I pointed out the profound and original nature of his thought*. I told him that it made me stop and think about the world, about myself, and about my status as a generous person. I told him to lead with that thought instead of the cliched idea of giving>receiving.

Bringing up that giving>receiving idea was simply warmup writing for Luis. He had to slog through the run-of-the-mill thoughts to find his way to his original thoughts. He did. I find that student writers often do this sort of slogging through and have not been told that this kind of writing may be necessary in process, but not in product. They need to know they are free to type it and they are free to delete it once a stronger, fresher, more original and striking thought has floated to the surface.

*Matt, the Student Life Coordinator at Desert Vista, and I so liked Luis' words that we hope to figure out a way to put them on a tee or a poster of some sort. Something simply must be done with words like these. Schools should not allow those words to be tucked away in a scholarship essay which will be read and filed and forgotten. Luis wrote something worth reading. We want to publicize that something, and in doing so, begin to discover ways to shed light on hidden student insights and ideas. Perhaps Luis' little proverb could be the foundation for an essay contest. Perhaps it could be used as the basis for a poster contest for art/design students. We shall see.