#readthenwrite

ReadThenWrite author Jessica G. is a student at Chicago Talent High School. In Finding Myself, she tells the story of how she adjusted to high school. Jessica is in the middle of the photo below holding the poster of her publication.

Author Bio

Jessica G. is a first time author from Chicago, IL. Her first story, titled Finding Myself, is about her journey as a high school student. Jessica enjoys writing poetry and studying music in her spare time. She attends Chicago Talent High School and has hopes of becoming a professional author one day.

Title: Finding Myself

Part One: Summer of Changes

My mother always told me, “Blessings come in people, places and things.”

July 2012: I was finally out of grammar school. Summer’s weather was beautiful and somewhat better than it had been in previous years. Sitting on my couch with music blasting through my headphones, I was bored and had no plans. All of a sudden, I received a call from an old friend. What she said knocked the wind out of me. I felt scared, confused and believed she was playing a cruel joke, but she wasn’t.

The day of his funeral was confirmation. Tynan, my peer, my friend, my classmate, was inside of a casket. Seeing his cold, clammy face made me face reality, made me terrified of the future. He was an active, loving 14-year-old, so seeing him not moving was heartbreaking. I remember 7th-grade year when he bought me a necklace. I wore it everyday because it reminded me of our relationship and his contagious laughter.

August 19, 2012: sitting in another church, for another funeral, wasn’t in my plans. My grandmother and I had been close since I was born. Last time I kissed her cheek, she was in a hospital bed, mouthing a silent phrase, “I love you.”

I held Angelica close to my side as tears flowed from her brown eyes. All the while, I kept my emotions on my dress sleeve. Being there for my younger cousin was more important than my own mourning.

August 20, 2012: I never thought smiling would be the hardest action in the world. Especially smiling on my 14th birthday. I kept a believable grin on my face when going out with my parents because I didn’t want my dad to worry about me. He had his own sorrows to take care of. I didn’t want to be another burden.

High school, freshman year: a new challenge, a new group of students. To say I was worried would have been an understatement. I never imagined this year would change my life for the better. I would find myself and overcome many challenges through people, places and things.

Finding Myself through People, Places and Things: People

First day of school. Keeping to myself was part of the plan from the start. I just didn’t want to become close to anyone else, just to lose them. My parents started to worry about my wellbeing, and so did my close friend, Isaiah. He told me to find an outlet. That’s when I met Charles Miles.

Mr. Miles was a poetry teacher from Youth Guidance who worked mostly at Crane High School. My father sought him out because silence to him was a plea for help. Mr. Miles became my stepdad...in poetry.

Having a life while maintaining good grades and after-school activities can be hard. When being busy is your lifestyle, you lose who you really are in the mix. Bringing new people into your life and trusting them to be by your side through thick and thin is difficult. Experiencing pain was just the usual and being close to only three people since grammar school was okay with me until I realized I had no friends at my new school. My friends Isaiah, Chyanne, and Darrion weren’t going to be there for me all my life, so anti-social Jessica had to go and cordial Jessica had to come out and introduce herself to the world. Meeting Alante was pure luck and actually awkward. I was sitting at a lunch table by myself when I heard someone whisper my name.  

“Jessica, Jessica,” a voice from two tables away said.

I turned around with a twisted and confused face to see where the mysterious voice came from, and when I saw who it was, I smiled. It was a girl from my classes who I had never really noticed until then. I walked to her table with a bubbly attitude. She was the only one I knew who knew my name. She scooted over on the bench, put her phone away, and then said, “Hi.”  

Track and field was always my favorite sport. So when I came to high school, joining the team was one of my top priorities until many events made me change my mind. Alante convinced to join and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Track helped  boost my maturity level and get my mind off my grandmother’s and friend’s deaths.

As they say, the rest is history. Alante is now my best friend, and someone who has helped me find myself. She has been a shoulder, a counselor, my comedian, and my other half.  She showed me that being a leader, a writer, and a little different was okay.  I have never regretted meeting her because she changed my life for the better.

Finding Myself through People, Places and Things: Places

All City, Louder than a Bomb, Aim High, track meets and banquets. Never in a million years did I imagine I would be on stages or running at state at just the age of 14. I always had stage fright, but somehow, bravery became my sister.

These events introduced me to talents hidden in myself that I couldn’t reach. These opportunities were like a mirror, showing me what I was made of, what I could handle and how strong I am.

Track taught me discipline and to give everything I am involved with 110%. Performing onstage gave me the heart, passion and sense of what I want to do with my life as well as a way to tell the world my story.

Finding Myself through People, Places and Things: Things

Nowadays, I believe that my future is so bright, I might have to invest in shades. My pencil, notebook, and track shoes have made me a better person. I’m looking forward and not backward because I realized the past made me who I am, but it can also hold me back.

Right now, my main foci are ACTs, scholarship money, family, and getting better every day at writing. Writing is my passion—it’s basically my baby. I have so many future plans—from a career in journalism to screenwriting—because of a hobby becoming much more. Honestly, because of the people, places, and things in my life last year, I found myself through the rubble. I sometimes consider myself the rose who grew through concrete. 

With summer vacation right around the corner, we notice that the students, coaches, and teachers in our programs tend to hit a lull, which means that it’s a great time to focus on building reading stamina. Read a little more about we address reading stamina in our programs, and check out our tips for boosting reading stamina with a child or youth in your life.

Richard Steele says, “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” No one can start running on Tuesday and complete a marathon on Wednesday. Being good at something -- anything -- takes time and practice. The same is true of reading. Reading stamina – that is, the ability to read with focus for prolonged periods of time – is a learned skill, and something that students have to practice and cultivate, regardless of their age or aptitude.

Here are four things Open Books does to address reading stamina in our programs. These “tips” can be adopted for a wide audience, including children, teens, and any other young readers in your life. We encourage you to adapt them – and let us know what works for you! 

1) Remember that there’s not just one way to read. In Open Books programs, most of the reading we do is done orally, so we can work on fluency. However, encouraging students to read in a combination of different modes (i.e. to themselves, to someone else, or listening to someone reading to them) is a great way to vary the reading experience and build stamina.

2) Pick the right books. We’ve written about this many times, but here it is again: at Open Books, we believe in giving the most engaging, absolute best books to our students. Younger students should be reading books that require some help when they read with an adult, but texts that can be read independently when reading at home. Likewise, if a teen reader isn’t interested in the story, it’s going to be hard to get him or her to read outside of school at all. Books with engaging plot lines or popular series are a great way to hook hesitant readers. Engaged readers read more frequently. Readers who read more frequently inherently build their reading stamina.

3) Set reasonable goals…and track them! In our Buddies program, Big Buddies and Little Buddies set a small reading goal every day. If the student reaches his or her goal, he or she earns a sticker toward a free book to take home. When we’re working on building stamina, those goals will involve time spent reading. A Big Buddy might challenge the Little Buddy to read for 10 minutes without stopping, followed by 15 during the next session, followed by 20 the session after that. Before long, a student will marvel at his or her ability to read uninterrupted for increasing amounts of time. Starting small and building up is a great way to boost stamina without overwhelming a student.

Like other upperclassmen across the country, our juniors at Gage Park High School -- where we’re currently teaching a college-writing focused session of ReadThenWrite -- have college on the brain this fall. With competition to get into schools at an all-time high, it’s no wonder that they’re feeling some pressure to come up with amazing stories to include with their applications. 

Research shows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds need more help getting into competitive schools, and that’s exactly why we’re in their classroom twice a week -- to demystify the college application process and shed light on how the critical college essay is constructed.

ReadThenWrite, at its core, is a program that shows students the value, strength, and resilience present in their life stories. When we teach college writing, we help explain to students that their stories – the things they have gone through, the decisions they’ve made, their dreams for their futures, are intrinsically linked to why they would be a good fit for a particular college.

This year, the Common Application introduced a brand-new set of writing prompts designed to help students uncover a story that will show admissions committees who they are as individuals. These new questions dovetail nicely with our program goals and the process through which we help students develop their personal essays.  Take a look below for the new prompts and click here to read our Guide for Helping Students Write Authentic, Engaging Essays for College Applications.

Option #1: Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Option #2: Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

Option #3: Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

Option #4: Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

Open Books’ Guide For Helping Students Write Authentic, Engaging Personal Essays for College Applications

1. Start with a Discussion about What Makes a Good Story

Sometimes students don’t realize that a good essay and a good story share the same components. Thus, if we’re going to write an engaging essay, we have to remember the ingredients for engaging writing. We love to start with Andrew Stanton’s Ted Talk about story telling.

 2. Realize (and Define!) Your Personal Strengths

At its core, a college essay is a supposed to “sell” a candidate to a school, but if you asked most of our juniors what they excel in, you’d get a stumped expression. Thus, we start with curated activities and conversations about personal strengths to give our students a vocabulary to speak about themselves positively. Knowing their core personal strengths help the students pick stories that exemplify their values.

3. Read…A Lot

One of the best ways for students to understand what’s expected of their essay is to read a wide variety of strong, well-written examples. Every week, our Gage Park students read essays and work in small groups to identify what makes them successful….and often beautiful, too!

4. Start With Several Story Topics and Whittle Down

We have our students begin to develop several story ideas, which they have to whittle down with the help of their writing coach and peers. This helps students pick the story that is closest to their hearts (and therefore most sincere) and that will place them in the right light. Note: these stories are not always happy ones – many of our students have overcome incredible obstacles in their lives.

5. Pre-Write, Outline, Pre-Write Some More

Our Gage Park juniors have been planning and plotting their essays for several weeks, revising their ideas, and discussing the finer details of their stories with their coaches. This will give them a very detailed map for writing an amazing, tight essay – and a deeper understanding about how the pieces fit together. 

6. Down Draft, Up Draft; Section by Section

We’ve introduced the components of our essays - introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions – one at a time, and given our students the opportunity to develop each section separately. From there, the students will have a working draft (which we call a “down” draft) to fix up, which they’ll polish, edit, re-write, slave over, and then send to colleges, all with individualized attention and help from their writing coaches. 

7. Voila!

  Educators, volunteers, and shoppers always ask us for book recommendations, so this month, we are sharing some of our must-reads with you! This fall, we're going nuts for Wonder, a brilliant book with timeless messages of tolerance, kindness, and empathy.  

Meet Auggie, a very special kid. He lives in New York City with his sister, his parents, and his dog. He's incredibly smart, and he’s geekily obsessed with Star Wars. However, Auggie was born with various physical deformities, and he's been gawked at, teased, and ridiculed for all of his life. A litany of characters (including Auggie, his friends, and his sister) carefully weaves the narrative of Wonder, which chronicles the trials, tribulations, and victories of Auggie's first year at public school.

We absolutely devoured this book, and are looking forward to teaching it with 6th and 7th grade ReadThenWrite students this fall and spring. We plan to read the book in small groups with our students, and then ask them to write two accounts of a conflict they have gone through: one from their private (first person) perspective, and one from the public, 3rd person perspective of someone else. Everything the students write will be professionally published and lauded at an Author Launch party in our amazing bookstore. We think they'll love Wonder as much as we do!

Get more information  about our ReadThenWrite program

 (including how to bring it to your school).