The Beautiful Impact of Books by Brenna

The Beautiful Impact of Books by Brenna - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

Walking into a classroom in a public high school can be a suffocating experience; the same, droning lectures first given in the eighties, the glazed look of suffering in the eyes of the students, the stench of stress. As an individual who craves academia, it disgusted me to see such a lack of moral, and desire only to achieve the grade and avoid learning. I began to brainstorm how to affect change in my school.

After presenting my observations to a former AP English teacher and mentor, we determined that the best way to encourage learning and foster change in our community would be to form a small group of determined, intelligent individuals capable of high caliber thought and action. I reached out to several of my peers, who understood my vision and promptly began meeting. Our members are dedicated to community service (thus far only individual work, but we have plans to volunteer as a group), and are encouraged to bring positive, willing attitudes to each of their classes. We attempt to stimulate academic discussion within the classroom walls, applying texts we’ve read to real-life situations and creating a foundation of what public education should offer.

As founder and president of Skyline High School’s High-Class Literary Society, I organize and facilitate meetings, events (such as movies and coffee shop meetings), direct group discussions, and select titles that represent literary merit in style and content. We’ve studied "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" by Ken Kesey, "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig, "The Tiger’s Wife" by Téa Obreht, and many others. We hope to expand our reach and encourage English teachers to bypass the traditional American Lit anchor texts and instead teach more relevant novels and other literary works by female authors, authors of color, and authors outside the 1920s timeframe.

I am proud of this achievement because it encompasses all the changes that need to be made to our society’s educational standards. We need to push students to succeed, but at the same time promote true learning in an engaging fashion. Our book club is somewhat of a prototype; what can be accomplished with a small, socratic group of dedicated students, rather than a lecture hall of 40 to 50 students with no desire to discuss the curriculum. The club is a safe space, and I have learned more about myself through literature in a 35 minute lunch period once a week than I have in my four years of high school. I know the same would be true for any given individual who joins, so I consider this a great achievement in advancing my personal education and that of my peers.