Each summer, Higher Achievement scholars participate in a six-week Summer Academy where they prepare for the school year ahead. This past summer, scholars wrote and submitted articles to be published in their Achievement Center Magazine. Their stories were authentic, engaging, and tested their English and language arts skills. Mayan Y., a 6th grade scholar at the Binford Achievement Center, explored narrative wiring in this creative piece on turning into an animal!
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Hi, I’m John Heights and I’m going to tell you about how I became an animal boy. It all started one weird Monday when I woke up to go to school and I did everything I do in the morning, but when I was brushing my teeth, I looked up and I was a monkey! A John Heights sized monkey. I was about to freak out, but I thought it was a dream so I pinched myself and closed my eyes for three seconds. I looked and I was a giant dog. I was thinking about what to do. Then I thought, ”its weird wacky Monday at school,” so that bought me time to think about how to change back into a monkey. I like monkeys.
After I figured out how to turn back into a monkey, I got dressed and went to school. I went straight to my science teacher for help at first, but he thought it was a joke. I turned into a zebra and then back to a monkey. He took my blood and told me to come back at the end of the day. As I was walking to my first class, I thought, “I don’t want to be obvious”, so I sat in the back of all my classes. At the end of the day, I waited ten minutes and went to the science lab where my science teacher was with my DNA and he asked what I drank last night. I told him “green stuff” and he said that it has made my DNA go crazy.
“I can’t fix it, you’ll be stuck like this forever.” I started to freak out, but Mr. Toast told me to stay calm. “I have an idea, we can use your powers for good and when you’re done you can turn back into yourself. You just have to focus on what you want to turn into.”
I said, “But what if I don’t want to save people?”
So he said, “You should, but save somebody and if you like it you don’t have to.”
I said, “How do I know somebody is in trouble?”
He said “I have this app.” So I turned into a bird and flew there to save a person I really liked. That is how I became an animal.
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