At WKCD, we’ve always thought that teaching and learning works best when teachers know their students well. It makes gut sense. And a great way to kick off the school year is to give students an opportunity to talk or write about themselves, to give their teachers a feel for who they are and where they’re from.
So today we’re announcing a new national writing contest, in which students across the country tell WKCD -- and the world -- “Where I’m From.” Please join us!
CONTEST GUIDELINES
Who can enter
Young people in grades 6 to 12, anywhere in the United States.
Entries
Your entry may take the form of either a poem or an essay (no longer than 400 words).
Before you write, we suggest that you read the poem “Where I’m From,” by George Ella Lyon (see below). What about this poem gives you the strongest feelings? Is there anything you can relate to in it? How do you think the author feels about where she is from?
Next, write your own “Where I’m From” poem. Rather than copying the order and form of Lyon’s poem, follow your own intuition in writing about the smells, sights, sounds, voices, people, and place you are from. Or, if poetry is not your thing, bring your life to light in an essay.
Finally, read your poem or essay aloud, to yourself or to others. What do you like best about it? What do you want to change about it? Revise your writing until it sounds true to your very own heart and voice.
To submit your entry
Email your work (as an attachment) to: info@whatkidscando.org
Deadline
October 31, 2010 (yes, Halloween)
Prize Winners
We’ll announce the winning entries on our website on November 15, 2010. Winners will receive $100 Amazon gift certificates and be published on the WKCD website – it’s a great place to take a bow!
Where I’m From
by George Ella Lyon
I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments—
snapped before I budded--
leaf-fall from the family tree.
TEACHERS:
Download a copy of “You Don’t Know Me Until Now,” a collection of writing and media from middle school Latino/a students in Austin, Los Angeles, and Oakland about place, identity, and culture (a collaboration between WKCD and the National Council of La Raza).
