Judging the 2018 National Book Week Essay Writing Contest 2 of 2

To cap off this month's blog posts, here is part 2 of the post on the National Book Week 2018 Essay Writing Contest where I continue sharing tips for writing coaches and mentors of students.

Here are my top five tips.

1. Know the rules. And consequently, ways of breaking them. When you follow rules to the book, where is room for creativity? In contests, contestants and participants can challenge the organisers and the status quo by showing a new insight, perspective or a way of doing things. It is a risk but one that is worth taking.

2. Know your purpose for joining in the contest and in coaching the student. Are you doing this to win or to teach and mentor? Which comes first, winning or mentoring? Your priority will define the future of your student and yours as well as teacher and mentor.

3. Do your research. Research on everything - past entries and winners of previous contests, issues relevant to the theme, new trends in writing styles and formats of contests.

4. Know your student, his or her skills, competencies and attitude towards the contest. It would help if you can also do a reading skills inventory with your student since reading and writing skills are sparing partners.

5. Know what essay to write and one that is applicable or suitable to the theme. A narrative and descriptive essay may be too personal and may miss out important points of the theme. A persuasive essay may need a lot of research. An opinion piece must show informed decisions that is well researched.

PLUS one more: Guide our student as he or she go through the writing process. Better if you and your student have designed a model of the writing process to follow.

Lastly, here are sources for teachers who are coaching mentoring students in their writing journey.

Teaching High School Students to Write - this is your toolkit for teaching, mentoring and coaching writing to high school students. The guide is produced and published by the Institute of Education Sciences (2016) and it has plenty of strategies and recommendations!

Time for Writing: The Essay - this is an online course for students and teachers who wish to attack learning writing as a process.

Becoming a Writing Coach - I am big believer of research-into-practice approach so here is a study on how teachers became better at teaching writing to middle school and high school students.

So, happy reading! Happy writing! It can be cognitive torture, but the benefits when the struggles are overcome are many and long term!

Judging the 2018 National Book Week Essay Writing Contest 1 of 2

This week, the winners of the National Book Week contests will be awarded at a special ceremony in Gateway Gallery in Cubao. Congratulations to all the winners! 

It was my first time to judge in one of the contests which was the Essay Writing Contest. My co-judges and I read through 60 entries and after four hours, deliberations included, we were ready to submit the winners.

In general, the entries followed a template of lofty ideals presented in one main idea and supported by details. Written by high school and senior high school students from different regions in the country, I had a glimpse of the students’ experiences of libraries, books and reading. Their stories are poles apart. Some essays show a rich expoaure to books while many reflect the scarcity of reading materials. I also had a sense of the level of writing skills of students of today. Essays with strong voices stood out as well as ones that are well structured. There are essays that are too personal, it missed the discussion of the NBW theme. On the other hand, there are essays that discuas big ideas related to the theme that lacked the authenticity of a high school student’s experience. At some point, I wonder who the student writer is writing for and does he or she know her purpose for writing the essay more so, joining a nationwide competitionz

I think these things need to be established early on. Writers write for themselves, yes, and this has to be processed and discussed with the student. Because, while this is true, writing is an art of communication. In my writing workshops with teenagers and adulrs, I begin by asking them existential questions: 

Who are you? 

Why do you write? 

What is your message or story?

What do you know that is worth sharing with others?

Wirting is personal and writers reach out to the world by communicating their stories and their knowledge. 

It is also important to know how to communicate one’s message and story. Enter craft, use of language and the mechanics of writing. This is the hard part. So, a writing process and model are set up so students will not be lost. If ever they wander away, which is often the case, then the process and model come in handy to bring them back to focus. 

Writing is a complicated cognitive activity. Students need mentors. While they have teachers, librarians can come in the picture and help teachers mentor students in the writing journey.