Annie Wright Middle School students had a great opportunity to learn more about letter writing and local government this month. This trimester, 8^th graders in Mr. Price’s and Mrs. Parks’ English classes wrote letters to Tacoma Council Members about an issue that they would like to see improved or changed. Each student researched a topic that was important to him or her and explained why it mattered.

 

To end the assignment, Mr. Price invited Tacoma Councilmen Anders Ibsen and Robert Thoms to have a discussion with the students. Last week, both Councilmen visited Annie Wright to talk about our letters. They spoke about the qualities they thought made an effective letter. Mr. Ibsen values good grammar and Mr. Thoms likes letters to get right to the point. Both prefer brevity, good facts to support the writer’s points and letters that suggest solutions. They also discussed the concerns from letters by 8^th graders Kieran Coumou, Chanel Crawford, Casey Kim, Catie Farrell, Hannah Mills, and Kelsey Reunanen. Some of the 8^th graders’ suggestions were building more movie theaters in Tacoma so people can watch movies without travelling a long way, replacing cement with concrete, and cleaning up the environment around Anderson Island so more people will want to spend time there.

 

This English project was challenging because we had to think seriously about what we care about, research the facts to support it and then present it in a letter which makes sense to the reader and is in the correct form. It was helpful to hear the Councilmen’s viewpoints about what makes a letter stand out to them and catch their attention. It is great that our real life representatives took the time to read our letters, visit our class, and discuss our ideas and questions. This showed us that even though we’re middle schoolers we can still make a difference in our community. 

- Christopher Cho