Sylas

So I have this kid in class, Sylas, a senior, and he was really dragging his feet with an essay I had assigned. It was an analysis of any William Stafford poem we had studied. It didn’t have to be long, 400-500 words. Sylas looked at me as if I had asked him to paint the world. He said, “There’s no WAY I’m writing 500 words on this!”

Sylas kind of plays this act of being quiet, seemingly disinterested, unmotivated...but I have seen a flash or two of brilliance. I told him by not turning it in, his grade would really suffer, possibly even to the point of not passing, and hence, not graduating.

Late in the day, he shows up in my room, paper in hand, and says, quite dryly, “441 words, Pops.” I shook his hand and said, “Great effort, man.”

I read it, and it was beautifully written. Normally in my comments back to students, I will write a couple of short sentences. With Sylas’s, I wrote two pages. I won’t go into all that I wrote, but I hope it serves to motivate him into following up on a future in writing. He told me thanks after he got his paper back, and we will see what happens the rest of the way. The last thing I wrote on his paper was a quote from the late, great Oregon distance runner, Steve Prefontaine: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”