Responses to what Harold calls a “purposely open-ended question” are judged not on their mechanics, but on the ideas presented. Winners receive cash prizes up to $50 and a class pizza party. In addition, Hormel Foods makes a donation to help the school purchase supplies.
“If he never was alive my friends who are black would be treated onfare [unfair]. I would not even no [know] them at all!” wrote Jack, a second-grader. “I get to be in the same things as white people. I get treated the same way as white people,” said Muna. Meanwhile, Liam voiced his belief “that violence is never the answer.”
“It’s amazing what these kids write about,” says Harold, recalling one child who made his essay about bullying. Even more powerful, perhaps, was the essay of the young boy who used the platform to tell his safely guarded story.
“He wrote about the fact that he has Asperger’s syndrome. He never shared it before, but he felt empowered to do so then because of Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” Harold says.
With tears in her eyes, the boy’s mother approached the member of HAARG who was visiting the school and told him that was something her son never wanted his classmates to know.
