Yeah, that's me in a yearbook pic circa Lord-Knows-When on Crazy Hat and Tie Day!
This big guy and I go way back to his sophomore year of high school, which was, uhm, 20-some years ago! (And the picture was taken by his wife, also once a student!)
Oh you might not know it from the occasional
errors you will find in my posts, but some days it’s pretty crazy behind the
scenes here, and I just have to hit the “Publish” button and pray it all makes
sense. And (yes, I know you are not
supposed to start a sentence with And, but it’s one of the perks of having your
own blog), I do miss teaching, especially the writing part of it all. To sit down with a student, talk about an
idea, and watch a blank piece of paper come to life with his or her own idea is
an incredible experience. It’s not
always an easy one, and sometimes there are MANY attempts before it all melds
together, but like farming, if you work at it (ok, and use the right kind of
fertilizer if needed), it will grow into a beautiful essay!
So you can just imagine my ears perking up and my heart
smiling when I learned that Indiana Family of Farmers and Indiana Humanities
are sponsoring an Ag Essay for kids grades 4-12! WOW!
It almost makes me want to bust out my purple grading pen! (That’s the color I used because red looked,
well, just so violent at the end of a graded paper!). I LOVE this idea for many reasons. 1. It
makes kids stop and think about where their food comes from and asks them to
consider how hard the people work to get it to them. 2. It asks the writers to consider that farmers
do care for the animals being raised on farms for food or to provide food in
the case of our Hoosier dairies and egg producers, and 3. It helps them to
understand how important it is for farmers and all of us to take care of the
ground we live on and grow food in so it will last us for many meals in the
future.
And now for the cool part, instead of getting a great grade,
winners will be chosen to receive great prizes!
Students have the
opportunity to win either Apple iPad or Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones
for writing a prize-winning essay! There
are three age breaks: grades 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12. Essays are due February 1. Entry guidelines can be found at www.indianahumanities.org or www.indianafamilyoffarmers.com.
Great prizes! Too bad I'm too big to enter.lol Writing is great for kids. I LOVE to write. I wanted to write books for a living when I was 10 y.o.-still do! Hope you had a good Thanksgiving! This year sure sped past quickly.
ReplyDeleteHow awesome!! Thanks for sharing. I think my kids might really be interested in this,and it may be something to beat the boredom after Christmas :) AND I start my sentences that way too :P
ReplyDeleteoops, my kids are too young. Well, I'll at least pin it and spread the word!
ReplyDelete