Roger Mason, Jr. and his mom kicked off our partnership with an amazing opportunity -- they invited 50 E.L. Haynes students to attend a special movie night with him at the Motion Picture Association of America's private screening theater!
E.L. Haynes opened the opportunity up to all of our 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th grade students, who competed for the chance to attend by writing essays on a special theme: Why is Hard Work Important?
Our students wrote some really special essays! Here are some excerpts for your enjoyment.
"My mom is an example of a hard working person. She has been persevering to get her own business. While developing her business, she continued being a full time mom and wife. She has done that by always putting family first. My mom is also a part time college student, pursuing another dual degree in English and Psychology. The reason why she start this business is helping other people have good lives in these hard economic times. She started this business not just for money but so she can give back to others." - Lamar
"I think working hard is important for many reasons. The first reason is that you can go to college. You can then get a degree and get a good job. One person that I know that works hard is my dad. He gets up very early because he owns two restaurants. My dad works hard because he wants a good family and he wants to give us food and clothes. I think that what Mr. Mason is doing is very nice and I want to say thank you so much." - Jacqueline
"Someone I know who worked hard is me. What I've done to work hard is over the summer I was on the computer/YouTube looking for all the soccer moves I can put in my head. That would take about one hour. Then I would go outside for about three hours practicing those moves. And one day I thought I was ready, and headed off to try out for travel soccer and all that hard work paid off and I made the team. Just like Roger Mason became an NBA star. " - Jimmy
"Me, Roger Mason, maybe you are the great example of hard work. If you work hard then you can improve the thing you want to improve on. Like me I want to improve my English and Roger Mason want to improve his basketball so we all try hard and work hard to make our goal. This is the reason why hard work is very important." - KaiLin
"[One] very successful person is my great grandmother (Gwendolyn Mastin). She was born in 1925 on a farm in Mississippi. Since her mom died when she was two and her grandparents died, she lived with her aunt. It was very hard in her time to achieve an education because she was black, but she graduated from high school. After that my great grandma had three jobs until her 60's and didn't retire until 10 years later. That proves my great grandmother had spunk and worked very hard." - Zahra
