Jefferson student places second in Animo Voices competition

The Animo Voices Competition is a competition in which Green Dot wide writing competition. Students wrote about someone who inspires them, and has had an impact to the author or the community.

At Animo Jefferson Middle School there were about twenty five entries all together. A group of teachers read the story entries anonymously, and voted for the best entries. Animo Jefferson came up with two placements, in first place was Manuel Argueta, a seventh grader at Animo Jefferson Middle School, and in second was Alize Benavidez, a sixth grader. Their two entries went on, and went up against all the other Green Dot Middle Schools’ top two entries.  Manuel Argueta placed in second within the whole competition.

I spoke to Carl Finer, a teacher at Animo Jefferson Middle School who helped Manuel with his writing piece. Finer said about Manuel’s story, “ His piece is about his dad, and kind of the immigrant experience, and how hard his dad’s work for his family paid off.” Finer said Manuel wanted to work on a newspaper-styled story, so teacher Teresa Argueta placed him to work with Manuel. Finer helped Manuel by looking at some mentor texts together, and breaking down what the characteristics were of a profile, or feature story.

Manuel said that he was proud of himself for winning second place, but he said he could have improved in transitions. “I kinda jumped around with ideas,” said Manuel. He got a $2,500 college scholarship, and he also got a Kindle. He had to read an excerpt from his piece to about 170 people. Manuel said he was nervous to get up in front of people.

Manuel said that if he had the opportunity to write another piece, he would write about his grandpa, who was like a dad to him while he stayed at Guatemala for about a year.