First Place: Raina Miller, 12th, Forest City High School, (Non-fiction) "My People"
From the time I was born until I was nearly thirteen, my brother and I were always at Karen’s. She lived in Woden, a nearly non-existent town now, and we lived about 15 minutes outside of it, right between Buffalo Center and Woden, in a great big, bright yellow farmhouse. (When I say bright, I mean that if you're in a 5-mile radius of it, you're not gonna miss it.) Karen was our daycare lady, however, I always feel a twinge of guilt calling her that because she’s so much more to me than that. She gave my brother and I both of our childhood bestfriends, Sheena and Carter. Every morning we’d walk the three blocks from Karen’s house to the preschool building down the road. Karen always accompanied us halfway, as well as drug along the other ten kids she was watching, just to make sure we got there safely. Then, when it was time to move to a different school building, which was about 10 minutes from Woden, we’d have to catch the bus in the morning. Karen would walk us to the corner on the end of the block every morning with a group of nearly 10 kids at times, just to make sure we made it. I can’t think of a more peaceful time in my life than when I was at Karen’s. She would take me to dance rehearsals during recital week. I remember being so excited when she would take me. Like one weekend, we went to a dance recital together at a different dance studio and talked the whole time about how much better the studio I went to was. I think that’s what makes Karen different than anyone I’ve met before, no one talked to me the way Karen talked to me. She was the only person growing up who acted as though they wanted to hear what I had to say. When you're five, you don’t realize that you don’t know anything, you don’t know that what you're saying has less meaning than that of an adult, you just talk. The only thing you really do know is whether or not anyone listened and Karen did even when no one else would.
To take children seriously is to value them for who they are right now rather than adults in the making Alfie Kohn
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