Selling kids on the importance of writing gets harder and harder every year, according to Liberty Middle School language arts teacher Alycia Marcarian. She says itโs true even when the prize is a full scholarship to any university in the state of Florida.
However, Jaylen McCall, 13, might be changing that, at least at Liberty.
The eighth-graderโs 500-word essay about former Black Seminoles leader John Horse was chosen last month as the winner of the middle school division of the Florida State Black History Month Essay Contest.
The prize: a full ride to the Florida university of his choice.
โItโs incredible,โ says Jaylenโs father, Jamal. โI had to look at (the prize) a couple of times.โ
It was Jamal, who does data and analytics for MetLife, who found out first that his son had won. He says he was in a midday meeting and missed a call. He didnโt recognize the area code, but called back anyway and received the good news.
He was able to keep it a secret while picking Jaylen up, bringing him home to change clothes, and dropping him off at practice for his West Florida Flames club soccer team.
From there, Jamal hustled over to Publix to buy some celebratory cupcakes, and returned to the field.
โI had to play it cool,โ Jamal says. โI ended up with a bunch of Valentineโs Day cupcakes and passed them out to a bunch of 13-year-old boys.โ
The soccer celebration shocked Jaylen โ โI thought it was somebodyโs birthday or somethingโ โ and he says his teammates have now nicknamed him โScholar.โ
Sadly, plans for Jaylen and Jamal to attend a celebratory Miami Heat vs. Chicago Bulls NBA game had to be scrapped due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Getting Jaylen, who says he enjoys writing, to enter the essay contest wasnโt that tough a chore. He says that he tries to write at least five stories every summer about โinteresting and entertainingโ things, and finds the craft relaxing and a great stress reliever.
When Alycia told him about the contest, he set out to write about someone whose story hasnโt been widely told. He had read about the Black Seminoles, a group of free blacks and runaway slaves who fought alongside the Seminole Indians during the Seminole Wars, the year before, and that led him to John Horse.
โI wanted to do somebody that nobody has heard of, so they could be interested in it,โ Jaylen says.
Once he started researching, he found himself wowed by the John Horse story โ a former slave who earned his freedom and went on to help other slaves escape, while wielding a large amount of influence as one of the leaders of the Black Seminoles.
It was a difficult process fitting everything he learned into 500 words. After days of researching, writing and editing, he entertained thoughts giving up.
โBut I kept working on it, and when I was done, I was really excited about it,โ Jaylen says.
Not only did Jaylen win a scholarship for his essay, he got to visit the governorโs mansion in Tallahassee and received his award from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
โThere were a lot of other people there and the governorโs mansion was really cool,โ Jaylen says. โThey also served food. They had some really good pineapple. It was really good.โ
Jamalโs essay, and the significant prize that goes with it, is sure to inspire other students to enter next year. He says many of his classmates have already told him that next year they will be participating, and some sixth graders recently told him they were amazed he got to go to Tallahassee and meet the governor.
โItโs a really hard sell, even when the prize is something great like this,โ Alycia says. โA lot of kids donโt want to do the extra work or think they wonโt win. Itโs a challenging task, but writing is something they have to do in college and beyondโฆ.luckily we have kids like Jaylen that work hard and do it anyway.โ