RESULTS ARE IN!
Back-to-School 2010 Essay Contest

Over the past month I received essays on “Why School is Important to Me” from students ranging from Kindergarten to 8th grade. Thank you to each and every one of the participants—I truly enjoyed reading all your essays.

The two winners from the elementary and middle school categories each received a $15 gift certificate to Powell's bookstore. (No essay entries were received for the high school category).

The winning essays and honorable mention excerpts were published in my November/December issue of The Neighborhood Connection newsletter. Below are the winning essays and the honorable mention essays. Thank you and happy reading!

"Why School is Important to Me”

Elementary School Category Winner:
Aubrey, Age 9
School is one of the most important things to me! I learn fun ways to remember everything I am taught. School will help me when I’m older.

Learning things from different subjects will help me figure something out when I’m older. If I don’t learn it, I’ll get stuck and ask someone to help me, so I do my best work in any subject.

I am in fourth grade. I have the same teacher my brother had and she is wonderful! My brother did some fun and amazing projects, and I am looking forward to doing them too!

School is very important to me, and to many others, too. It is very fun to learn. School is wonderful and I am glad no one is ever too old to stop learning!

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Middle School Category Winner:
Ivan, Age 13
School is now more important to me since I enter high school next year and all my work there will affect my future. I have many more reason why school is important to me and I’ll be glad to share my reasons.

One reason it’s important to me is since I live in the U.S. I get a free education unlike other countries. Many poor countries have to pay to get an education and it’s one thing that bothers me a lot. I do not even know why some of my classmates don’t even care about going to school while they get a free education.

Another reason why school is important to me is that if I can get to college, I’ll be one of the first few people in my family that go to college. My family could not go to college before because they either dropped high school came from Mexico. Now my parents and other relatives are now supporting us to do our best in school to go to college and get a degree. Already my older cousins are entering college and now everyone wants to help them in some way to get a career.

School is also important to me because it inspires me to use my ideas to help our community. One of my ideas is to change the law that every immigrant can live wherever they want. I also want the people to know that we should live in peace, all live in the same earth yet there are many war. Animals are being extinct and what we should do is save them; they aren’t different from us, yet we destroy their homes.

That’s why school is really important to me; it gets me a career and a mind of wisdom.

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Elementary School Category Honorable Mention:
Rylie, Age 8
School is important to me because we always read and reading is my favorite subject in school.  We make similes and these are some of mine.  My hamburger is as black as wood in a fire.  My popcorn is as hot as red rocks in Arizona.  My apple is as red as a sun burn.  We did animal alliterations where mine was about pigs and it went like this, playful pigs playing Poptropica while eating potatoes also playing packrat.  Pigs play with positive puppies.  We also practice handwriting which I like a lot because I am good at writing in cursive.  I am good at print but I am better at cursive.

Now I will talk to you about the math at my school.  First of all, my teacher just got us whiteboards and we love them but our erasers are socks.  The reason why is she did not want to spend a lot of money on those erasers that your suppose to use because they were too expensive and she would have to spend 87 dollars and 5 cents so that is why we use socks for erasers.

My teacher will give us problems on the board like 8 + _ = 11 and we put the answer which in this case the answer would be 3.  I am really good at math.  We have these things in my class where we have to do the top half and then the bottom half in 2 minutes that are called math facts.  I am on level x and I only have 2 more levels to go isn’t that cool, yeah!

Now I will tell you about grammar so we have to do grammar sometimes.  I am okay at grammar.  I would like to improve on my grammar more than any other subject in school.  I like it but it is not my favorite subject in school but I already told you my favorite subject in the beginning of the essay, reading.

Now I will move on to geography.  We did a unit with flat Stanley which is a book if you have not heard of it, it is okay.  We colored a picture of flat Stanley and then we wrote something called a friendly letter and I sent mine to my uncle and 3 cousins and their dog.

Learning about all of these subjects in school is why school is important to me.

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Elementary School Category Honorable Mention:
Manu, Age 10
School is important to me because you can make social network around you. Social networking is when you make friends and get a long with them well and not have any fights. It is also when you help a person who is trouble like with bullies teasing your friend. Last social networking is when you make more and more friends until you make a group.

Second school is all with books and books which I love to read. Reading is good because it helps you get your knowledge. Non fiction books help you get your knowledge more because they tell the facts. This can help you know about the world and all its amazing features.

Third school has time for math. They teach math because you need know about all the new things in math and how you use it such a way that it comes perfection. You need perfection to get famous. So math is one of things get you perfect.

Fourth you always need some physical activities. This is also called P.E. P.E stands for physical exercise. You need this to get strong and healthy for walking and running all the things you need to move. Your body always needs some energy to keep you up. This goes in the health system where you have your strength.

Fifth let’s get some science in our heads.Everyone needs some science where they can work like scientists. This is the job when you get cool experiments to do. When you do these experiments you use a inquiry. Inquiry is the steps you use when you do science. These are the steps: Questioning, procedure, data and analysis. Sometimes science is very important.

Finally you always need an ending. Everyone needs some rest after the hard work. When you go home you do your homework and finish. So these are the things that are important to me. Remember they help you in different places.

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Elementary School Category Honorable Mention:
Overcomer, Age 8
Have you ever wondered why people have to go to school? Well, the answer is simple. School is important for your future. There are many reasons why this is so. First of all, schooling provides you with the education necessary to get a job. Secondly, school teaches you many skills that you need for the future. Lastly, school provides us with a sense of social responsibility. Consequently, school plays a significant role in a person's future. “School is like honey in our mouth” that why is important.

One of the biggest reasons school is important for a person's future is that you need an education to get a decent job. To start off, most jobs require at least a grade 12 education. Since the competition for jobs in the marketplace is so high, people with grade 12 are hired before those who never graduated. Thus, without grade 12, a person will have a very hard time finding a job. A second fact in support of this is that most decent paying jobs require some form of college education. For example, most of the jobs that pay significantly above minimum wage, require a certain degree of post secondary training. Therefore, if you want to get a decent paying job, you obviously need schooling. A third reason this is so is that all jobs require you to have certain basic skills such as reading and writing. Without schooling a person would not learn those skills so obviously people need schooling to learn the skills necessary for the job market. Overall, once can see that school is important in helping a person locate respectable employment.

Another reason schooling is valuable for a person's future is because it teaches them the skills they need to know. Firstly, school teaches us the skill of reading. One example of how reading helps us can be seen from the fact that people need to be able to read both to find jobs in the classifieds, and to properly fill out job application forms. Obviously, without reading, this would be very difficult to do. A second ability that school provides us with school skill for our future, As for me I want to be a scientist when I grow up, because I want to be able to study many thing about the future, I would like to be involve with different experiments that will help produce meaningful, outstanding. So far school have help me write my little book on planet” where I explain different aspect of planet, I love that book because my mother to get it signed by so many people in her office, infect in school my former principle and other teacher also signed it as an encouragement to me for my effort as a former second grader. If not for school, I would not have had the skills to put my thoughts about planet in wring. It was awesome.

Thirdly, school has helped me a lot in be responsible to myself and to my family, when I was in grade two my parents helped me with my home work, but right now I have shown to them that I can be responsible for my education, by doing my home work within twenty-four hours, like my mother said to me, “for you to be somebody, you must show yourself responsible, respectful, and have fear of your creature. I have so far, helped them a lot in the house with my two little ones, I have taken the responsibility of cleaning my room, help daddy in anything he wants me to . I think it is school that have enable to me be what I am today. One particular thing about my responsibility is that I have stayed alway from any kind of trouble that will be bad to my name, even when people call me names, or treat me bad, I have always forgiven them because that is part of me showing that I can be responsible and respectful. In class I have to shown that am responsible by doing my work on time, and helping my teacher when necessary.

School is very important it can make me to be a good leader, lawyer, Doctors Nurses, and scienctic. School is very very important, therefore I am encouraging every family to send their kids to school, even if they cannot offered it. am sure the current president will help them. School is the most important place that will teach children how to make friends, learn respect, responsible, discipline. I LOVE SCHOOL.