National Day on Writing: student's submission (#whyIwrite)

What follows is something one of my students wrote, and yes, he wrote it. I didn't put him up to this in any fashion. I just gave him the assignment, and his seeds of ideas germinated into this. He doesn't blog, but he still takes part in my class in all the other ways. What he wrote was very touching, even though it mentions no names. I wanted to share it here with you because, as he says at the end, "many teachers in this country [. . .] would fit this description."

National Writing Day

By Brett Skinner

To me, a good topic is to talk about those things necessary to be a good teacher of future writers. Many students do not write well. It is a rare talent to have the ability to teach students how to write, and to write well. To get this job done, the teacher must motivate his students to want to do well. My teacher does this, and makes it seem easy.

The man I'm talking about teaches journalism and yearbook. It take journalism but not yearbook. He is an excellent teacher who uses humor to get us to do the things he wants. He really never "chews us out," even when we deserve it because we've missed a deadline or not done an assignment. He is always ready to help us get it done. He's a really nice guy.

This teacher is a good worker. He never misses his class. This helps because he's always around to help us. I'm not going to name my teacher because I think there are many teachers in this country that would fit this description. I just want to thank them all.