Recently, we’ve been reading Roald Dahl’s memoirs entitled Boy: Tales of Childhood. In it, he brings to life the people who left an imprint upon him, from parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, to friends like Thwaites and an old hag, as Dahl calls her, like Mrs. Pratchett. The chapters of his book read like a series of personal narratives, depicting the early years of his life and the lessons learned. It occurred to me to wonder who has left a memorable imprint upon you? What is this person like? What have you learned from the experience of knowing him or her?
Write a short composition (three to five paragraphs) about a person who has affected your life. Use good sensory details to discuss him or her, and pick someone you care about, someone who has left an imprint on you, someone living or deceased. Follow this procedure for this assignment:
- You may begin by recording your thoughts in MS Word. Once you’ve finished your short composition, have at least one other person in class read it to suggest revisions and to help with MUGS errors.
- Save the Word document to your network drive.
- Next, copy and paste your composition from Word into Notepad and adjust any spacing problems as necessary. Save your Notepad document to your network drive.
- Last, copy and paste your Notepad document into the comments field of this blog and adjust any spacing problems. Proofread one more time and submit.
Your composition should be posted as a comment to this post by Friday, Dec. 22. A first draft should be done by Wednesday.
What follows is a model essay of someone who affected my life in a positive way. I hope you enjoy reading it.
My teammates and I first met Coach F., a young, new assistant football coach, recently married to Wanda, from Pennsylvania, at football practice in late August of 1965. He had just graduated from a university in California, and my father, the Superintendent of Schools for the school district at the time, had just hired him to teach business education and to coach football not more than a couple of days before the start of football practice that August. Leastways, that’s what I recall more than forty years later.
He took to us immediately and we to him, and we caught his enthusiasm and spirit from the get-go. The head coach, Mark O., another coach and teacher, since deceased, who also left a lasting impression, had given Coach F. the backfield to coach. But Coach F. wasn’t satisfied with what he judged as our lack of spirit. One of the first drills we backs did for him was a series of short forty-yard wind sprints. We lined up, got in our three-point stances, and he blew the whistle. Off we raced, but silently. He blew the whistle to stop us and wanted to know what was wrong. “Nothing, coach,” we said, shrugging our shoulders and wondering what he was getting at. He looked at us and said that, where he came from, football players made more noise than that.
We lined up again, he blew his whistle, and off we raced again, this time with what we thought was a loud yell. He blew his whistle right away, stopped us, and with hands on hips, gave us an unmistakable look, a look that said, “That’s the best you can do?” He then told us that he wanted to hear what we were made of, what we were. He wanted a roar, not some weak-kneed yell that could be knocked down and tackled easily. We understood and lined up again. This time when we took off, and all the subsequent times that week, we roared. And roared. Many years later, I’ve realized what he was teaching us: that whatever you do in life, go after it, with energy and effort, with spirit, care about it, and when you’re a part of a team, act like it. If you fail, so what. Get back up and try again. What more valuable lessons can any teacher give? It may have taken me a while to learn them, but thanks, Coach.
Mr. Seybert
Not the Last Word 8 
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