Personal perspectives lead Wildcat writers to top of MLK essay contest for UWO
While 50 students across the district entered competition, West boasted the second and third place finishers for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Essay contest. Senior Sheyla Isaula-Reyes and junior Bri Young will receive plaques and gift bags from UW Oshkosh honoring their work.
The high school prompt was to consider a quote from Dr. King’s 1957 sermon entitled “Conquering Self-Centeredness:” “An individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity.” Students were asked to reflect upon the quote and how it applied to them and current events. Contest coordinators Karen Bowen and her daughter Ann Bowen have been judging the past two years.
“The basis of the judging are standards we’ve received from the OASD like student writing in school,” Karen Bowen said. “When we had 350 students, we had a number of different judges from different cities. Although the last two years it has just been my daughter Ann, who is an editor and writes, and myself. In general, we’ve had as many as 10 judges at a time.”
Director of Curriculum and Assessment Julie Conrad was especially excited about this year for West’s winners.
“One interesting piece is that historically Oshkosh North has been, at the high school level, the predominant winners in the essay contest, and this year we have two West High School winners which is wonderful to see,” she said.
Conrad has seen definite development of the contest since it began 19 years ago, whether through the participatory audience or the topics.
“It first started off as a middle school and high school essay contest and expanded more into the elementary level,” she said. “Over time, essay prompts have changed and shifted depending on what's going on in our world, our nation, and our community. Especially 20 years ago, there wasn’t a lot of conversation about not just Dr. King, but what it was like to be a person of color in this country.”
Isaula-Reynes’ essay focused on inequality present today in America as well as similar events and issues regarding race.
“My essay started off with a man seeing a protest, and I really like classical music, so I connected it to how some people have all their strings on their violins but there's some people that have had theirs broken off,” she said. “Or their violins don't necessarily work or are not as perfect as others. I basically said that we’re a synchronized orchestra but some of us don't have the same violin.”
Overall, there was one main thematic message that Isaula-Reyes wanted readers to take away from her essay: keep an open mind.
“It's important to just listen to people, and I think it's important to let go of your individual need to be right and to just listen to other people's thoughts,” she said. “I'm saying all these things like ‘All Lives Matter’ are bad, but I'm also open to hearing what your thoughts are, because it's important to strip yourself away from always being in the right and just listening.”
Young had a similar message in her piece and she recommended things like taking funds from some places and putting it into education systems to keep people off the streets.
“The quote basically was talking about how to make society a better place. You have to worry more about society than yourself and so I talked about how implementing that in daily life can help our society become much better and a loving place for everybody,” she said. “If we were to work together on the problems rather than fighting about everything, our country could become a very lovely place in the future.”
To Young, the opportunity the competition provided was more than the prize of third place: it gave food for thought.
“It made me think about how much more important it is to worry about societal problems rather than your own daily life problems,” she said. “If you spend all your time worrying about the small things such as school drama or being late for the bus rather than worrying about problems that affect a larger whole, nothing is going to get fixed.”
The competition creates plenty of opportunities for younger people to have a voice. Isaula-Reyes was surprised to place second but found the experience very encouraging.
“I think it's always important to talk about problems and get viewpoints from people and it's always important to hear that individualistic voice of new experiences people have had, because obviously for me, it's going to be a little bit different than if someone else wrote it,” she said. “It's important because you get to hear what the effects of this behavior or mistreatment have on a person or the authors and it also informs people on how they feel and how it affects them.”
Even though Isaula-Reyes never intended to win anything, she felt she was able to be extremely genuine in her writing which she believes helped her place. MLK is an important symbol to her and writing was a way to express her personal worries.
“If I was to talk to Martin Luther King Jr. I would feel disappointed because of what I would have to say to him,” she said. “It's been around 60 years since he was fighting for civil rights and I feel like we've moved far, but I feel embarrassed. I wouldn't know what to say considering current events. That's kind of why I wrote it because you could choose to talk about COVID-19 and stuff like that, but I felt this issue of equality was so much bigger.”
Even after many years, MLK remains a source of inspiration for students to look into social injustice and conflicts in America.
“I think in order to really honor the work that he did, to keep his dreams and his goals alive, and keep that at the forefront of our minds, this essay contest is really a great way for students to kind of reflect on that work and think about what it means for them in light of all of the things that are happening in our lives right now,” Principal Erin Kohl said.
Young finds that there are many things that people today can still take from MLK and the competition was a fresh exercise of analysis.
“He was so persistent and no matter what, he just kept persisting in his fight and it was his whole life,” she said. “It's important to learn about him and also learn about how you can help with these sorts of things. I think it's a good way to get your mind thinking and see things from a few different perspectives and how the past impacts the present as well as how the present is going to impact the future.”
Despite the effect the competition has had on West’s winners, Bowen and the competition found it more challenging to discover and encourage participation.
“Part of what stood out this year was how difficult it was to get a class project or something like this to get going,” she said. “It’s difficult to get teachers and kids interested. When everyone’s in a classroom, you can get kids working and get conversation going. With the teacher’s help, they can get enthused about something. It’s hard to do that virtually, especially with elementary kids, who have always had the most entries.”
In previous years, the competition would have hundreds of students entered, but this year there were only around 50. Next year marks the 20th annual MLK contest and it’s possible it may be the last, but Bowen is hopeful for the future.
“Next year is the last year my daughter Ann and I will be doing this and so I’m hoping someone else would be willing to step in after next year,” she said.
Isaula-Reyes sees the contest not only as a chance to express her unique voice, but an opportunity to illustrate concern and teach other students and adults.
“I mean it's rewarding to know that people understand your frustrations and that you can put it out there,” she said. “Participating is going to spread the message of the conflicts that are going on, and you’re putting awareness out there. Obviously you're having a negative viewpoint on it because it's hurting you so you let people know that this should be solved. I think that people should participate in it because it brings awareness to issues out there.“
Bowen believes that even if students don’t win anything, they would have had an opportunity to do research and grow. To be taught history from school is one thing, but to take the reins yourself and learn what may not be taught is even more beneficial.
“People think discrimination and Jim Crow doesn’t exist anymore and that everything is equal, but that is not necessarily true,” she said. “You can’t keep people out of bathrooms or bubblers, but housing discrimination still exists. There’s conversation about differences between schools with predominantly African American neighborhoods or inter-city neighborhoods, or just sometimes how students of color are treated in schools. Whether or not you decide to write an essay, I think it’s important for people to take an attempt to learn about civil rights and their history.”
By Javit Thao
January 29th, 2021
Oshkosh West Index Volume 117 Issue 4