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3 Hazelwood West Middle Students Win Awards in Florissant Elks’ Essay Contest
Bonnie Vigland, left, Aaron Hinton, center, and Alex Simmons, eighth-grade students at Hazelwood West Middle School, were selected as winners in the Florissant Elks’ Lodge 2316’s “Why I am Proud to be an American” essay contest.
Three Hazelwood West Middle School eighth-grade students received awards in the Florissant Elks’ “Why I am Proud to be an American” essay contest.
Aaron Hinton, Alex Simmons and Bonnie Vigland discussed their 250-word essays and what it means to them to be U.S. Citizens.
The contest gives students a chance to express their opinions on pride in America. Elks’ Division 2 judges, which judge seventh- and eighth-grade winners, chose essays based on their originality, theme development and sentence and grammar mechanics plus neatness. There are four levels to the contest, beginning with the local or subordinate lodges, progressing through district and state lodges and ending with the national contest. The students won the local lodge’s contest.
“It feels good to me personally because I want to be an author,” Simmons said. “I tried to zoom in on our nation as compared to other countries in what makes us lucky. Some countries have dictatorships. I have a great deal of pride being an American. I feel that my life would be a lot different and probably for the worse if I lived somewhere else.”
Vigland said the United States is not as bad some people and places portray it.
“After I figured out what I was going to do, it didn’t take long to write,” Vigland said. “A lot of people here think we have it so terrible and while we have flaws, we have a lot of good things here, too. People think government and religion are tied when they really are not. I was really surprised I won because I didn’t think my essay was that great.”
Hinton said he did not write his essay with a specific topic in mind.
“I just wrote about my opinions on how I feel about living in America,” he said. “We are lucky to live here. People in third-world countries don’t have the things we do, like running water. I think it feels good to win. It feels good to represent your school.”
