Satire_at_It's_Finest

WASHINGTON, DC- "More Writing Will Make Kids Smartr" Famed English Literature teacher and author, Bill Shaker, has proposed a plan to raise grades of students all over the country. “Kids need to write more, it’s good for them,” says Shaker. As a child, Shaker wrote a sonnet a day for one year. During his career as a writer he also wrote over 30 plays. He abandoned his career as an author and playwright to teach English. Shaker believes his plan will raise the standards of schools, increase college acceptance, and SAT scores. Part of his plan consists of: writing a 3 page paper a day in every subject, reading and annotating 21 poems a week (or 3 a day), and other various writing activities. When asked why he believes his plan will work he says, “Well, it has to. I am Bill Shaker and my techniques are the greatest techniques out there.” Among Shaker’s numerous plays and sonnets, he also spent some time editing college essays. It is reported that every student’s essay that he edited got that student accepted into college. Some say his editing got the least likely student into Harvard. Shaker’s plan has been implemented in a small school in Portland, Oregon. The Red Heron School in Portland has been running on Shaker’s plan for over 20 years now. It was introduced in 1983 to the incoming kindergarteners, in which the class was of 150 students. They started off small: writing 1 sentence a day for 10 weeks, 2 sentences a day for 20 weeks, and 3 sentences a day for 10 weeks. From kindergarten on, the amount of writing increased significantly. By 12th grade, students were writing over 6 papers a day. Teacher and Principal, Amanda Lyell, has monitored progress of students at Red Heron from the day Shakers plan was implemented. “It is a brilliant plan, I don’t know why it wasn’t thought of before!” says Lyell. Terry Turner, a student of the kindergarten class Shaker’s plan was first tested on, dropped out by 9th grade. “I couldn’t take it, the amount of writing we were subjected to was outrageous,” says Turner. Turner is one of the 100 students of the original 150 that dropped out sometime in their high school career. Tess Ryan on the other hand graduated successfully at the top the class that year. “I loved it. I sometimes wrote more than I was required to,” she says about Shaker’s program. Ryan firmly believes it should be introduced in every school in America. Red Heron has been the only school so far to have adopted Shaker’s plan. Since the original graduating class of just 10 (the other 40 did not attend Red Heron by the time they graduated for one reason or another), the number has increased to 20. Ron Arnold is adamant about stopping the further introduction of Shaker’s plan into schools in America. “Clearly, it has not done Red Heron very well, what makes you think it will do much better elsewhere'” Arnold argues. Amanda Lyell thinks with the new technologies developing daily, more students will have an easier time with Shaker’s plan. Despite Arnold’s actions against the expansion of Shaker’s plan, Shaker is still confident his plan will be introduced in schools everywhere by 2030; but for now, we are stuck with the standards of today.