Loyalty and Integrity -- An Essay

[Gil]

I've preserved his punctuation and spelling as is so those aren't typos--he wrote them and carefully copied out the same misspellings from his draft to his final copy. I have no idea what some of those spellings are about but the reason I'm posting this is because I need from someone more "Englishy" than myself.

 

Anyone want to help me critique this essay for things like organization, grammar, flow etc? I'm out of my depth with a lot of writing type things because I don't quite know what I'm doing with composition, if I'm honest.

Loyalty and Integrity

by Buddy (age 8)

 

Loyalty is about how faithful you are to a person, group or philosophy. For exampel: If you are a Christian you are supposed to be loyal to the teachings in the Bible and support other Christians in community. If you are married you are supposed to be loyal to your wife and help her in life with money and emotional support stuff like cheering her up and being a good listening person for her thoughts, you should support her dreams and not laugh at them too much.

 

Integrity is when you are loyal to your own personal thoughts and feelings, its when you have ideals and standards for yourself. Like if you are a Christian and you break the rules in the Bible about Christians when no one is watching, or when you are married but you have a secret extra girlfriend without permission from your wife, and you feel in yourself about that what you ddi is bad. If you are okay with what you are doing because no one else knows that is not integrity. If you change your actions that no one sees then that is a demonstration of integrity. If you just act against your ideals very sneakily so that you never get caught, but pretend to be a man of integrity, then you are a hippocricket. A Hippocrickte pertends to be loyal or to have integrity when there are others around but they only put on a show so people will believe that they are loyal or that they have integrity.

 

So what do you when your with a group of people who have no integrity? What if the groups integrity is not along with your personal integrity? If you are truly friends with someone and they are breaking the law or being cruel do you stand by them because you are really their friend or do you walk away from their criminal mischuff when they are doing something that you can not support because of your own integrity?

 

Is it more important to be loyal or to have integrity? Do you have grey areas about when to let some things go? This is a question that every boy has to answer for himself. Even if they are adults so not boys but men. Integrity is what you use to find "the line" the one that you are are not supposed to cross or your gonig to be mad at yourself or disappointed with your own actions even if someone says it isn't a big deal. And girls too, probably. Because even though some men, there are a lot of disloyal female people without integrity too.

 

If you think for yourself that its wrong to to do something like pick on smaller kids, then you should not pick on smaller kids or help someone else who might be a friend of yours hurt an animal because they are alive like us and have many neurons and nerves in their brain--its painful to them when someone hits them like it is painful to you when you are hit. If you stand up to someone you do not like its easy becaus you do not like them anyway and are always wanting to tell them off like when you hate someone. You think "Well, I hate him anyway so I always like to tell him to "shut up" when he is mean to someone."

 

But what if the person is your friend and they should be told to stop? Can you tell your best friend to back off and shut up when they need to hear it? If not then you are not a very good friend and you are compromising your own integrity. Its more important to stand up to your friends because you want to fit in and be accepted by them. You do not want to be left out or ignored, but if you just follow anything they do then you have crossed your own lines and lose your integrity.

 

There is a saying by a man who is dead now but was named Malcolm X, it goes like as follows: A man who stands for nothing, will fall for anything. These are GREAT words to grow with and to live by. I like this saying because it makes you think about what you should stand for. Sometimes my friends do really stupid stuff for really stupid reasons and when I see thim about to do it again, I tell him to stop but I also leave. Don't worry about leaving them. You are still being a good friend because you have given good advice that if thy take its good for them, but you have demonstrated integrity by leaving and refusing to participate in mischuff with your friends.

 

There are things that you should never do no matter what. Like spitting on people. Spitting on a person is so nasty and its worse than just hitting them, everyone hates being spitted on because its repulsive and spitting says that you have a lot of disdain for them and don't care that they are human. I would rather punch someone than spit on them, punching means your mad at them and have lost your temper and are ready to fight with them, but spitting is too much disrespect and just nasty. People should never spit on other people unless its a spit shake for making a deal. Another thing that you should never do is bad mouth people behind their back to others. If you are mad with them--tell them to their face so you can be on the same page and sort it out or punch one another so that you are clear about the issue, but don't bad mouth them. Sometimes, your friends will not like someone and you will not have a problem with that person. If you defend that person or tell your friends to stop trash talking them behind their back that is because of integrity. If you laugh at the bad mouthing or do it too because you want to fit in then you are compromising your integrity.

 

Its harder to have integrity about how you treat your enemies or when your friends are doing something that they shuld not and you feel its wrong. But those are the times that you are supposed to use integrity the most. People should always be treated like they are humans and you should never let your friends drag you over your own line and you should never cross your own line to fit in. Its better to be the only voice of reason than to be one of the crowd of mischuff makers. Its more important to have integrity than to be loyal to a group. Going with the group is when you are part of the mob mintalety and usually a mob is making bad choices very quickly because there is too much emotion. If a group is okay with doing something that you know is wrong within, then you should not go with the group out of loyalt and that is The End

 

[Junie]

Quick questions -- How old is he?  What "grade" is he in for language?  (I use the word "grade" loosely.)

 

 

[8filltheheart]

I haven't finished reading it yet, but I just had to say that I love the word hippocricket.  :)  I think it is one of the most precious words I have read in any child's writing!!  :)

[8filltheheart]

Gill,

 

I see huge improvements in both boys' writing since the earlier examples you posted.  This one is far more cohesive with a much more mature organization and flow.  It is truly superior for his age.  He still needs to work on punctuation.  I saw several places with run-on sentences or missing apostrophes, etc.  My suggestion would be to simply talk about  being careful about those and the need to look for them when proofreading.  I wouldn't focus on them in this piece or even fret about them at all.  The spelling mistakes are totally and completely normal at this age, and his spelling for his age is fantastic.  Like I posted above, I love the word hippocricket and I wouldn't have touched it with a 10 foot pole with an 8 yr old.   With a 10 or 11 yr old, yes, but at 8, no.  

 

You are doing great!  Don't change anything about what you are doing b/c whatever it is, it is working well.  Like I said in my post about Pal, just self-educated punctuation and grammar and address them conversationally when going over rough drafts and try to get them to find their mistakes when they are proofreading with you.

[Gil]

I haven't finished reading it yet, but I just had to say that I love the word hippocricket.   :)  I think it is one of the most precious words I have read in any child's writing!!   :)

 I realized later that the misspelling stems from the way he says the word. He doesn't say hypocrite, he says hypocrict.

[Space station]

I absolutely loved reading this and getting a glimpse into the mind of an obviously gifted and charming 8yo boy. When you say he copied the misspellings from the draft to the final, had you marked lines or words with him on the draft that he should have checked for spelling? If so, then I would ask him to go back and look up the spelling of the words you marked for him on the draft and fix it. If you didn't do that on the draft, then I would let them go on this assignment and do it on the next assignment - underline misspellings for him on his drafts and have him look them up to correct for the final.

 

I love his thought process about spitting being worse than hitting!

[Junie]

Excellent, excellent, excellent!!

 

This would definitely be an A in my grade book.  If I kept grades at this age ;)

 

Things to work on:

 

apostrophes

sentence fragments

paragraph construction -- outlining first might help

not using so many questions to prove his point

 

He is an excellent writer with advanced ideas.  Bravo!!

[Gil]

Gill,

 

I see huge improvements in both boys' writing since the earlier examples you posted.  This one is far more cohesive with a much more mature organization and flow.  It is truly superior for his age.  He still needs to work on punctuation.  I saw several places with run-on sentences or missing apostrophes, etc.  My suggestion would be to simply talk about  being careful about those and the need to look for them when proofreading.  I wouldn't focus on them in this piece or even fret about them at all.  The spelling mistakes are totally and completely normal at this age, and his spelling for his age is fantastic.  Like I posted above, I love the word hippocricket and I wouldn't have touched it with a 10 foot pole with an 8 yr old.   With a 10 or 11 yr old, yes, but at 8, no.  

 

You are doing great!  Don't change anything about what you are doing b/c whatever it is, it is working well.  Like I said in my post about Pal, just self-educated punctuation and grammar and address them conversationally when going over rough drafts and try to get them to find their mistakes when they are proofreading with you.

Thank you so much for all your help 8. We have been working on compositions. I really feel that I, personally write really weak conclusions so while I struggle most with coaching them on how to end a composition, it doesn't help that Buddy has my "weak conclusion" genes which you can tell from Buddies consistent use of The End.

 

small rant: Pretty much every single thing Buddy writes ends with "The End" I have told him to stop it more than 10x already. The one time I directly forbade him from using "The End" he freaked out because he didn't know how to end his composition and honestly, I didn't know what to tell him about wrapping up a composition and ending something without his 2 favorite words so I told him to just end it the best he could. He wrote "The End" in his best handwriting ever. Which wasn't exactly what I had in mind but it was Friday night so I let it go.

[8filltheheart]

, I didn't know what to tell him about wrapping up a composition and ending something without his 2 favorite words so I told him to just end it the best he could. He wrote "The End" in his best handwriting ever. Which wasn't exactly what I had in mind but it was Friday night so I let it go.

 

That is as precious as hippocricket!   :)  Seriously, he sounds absolutely delightful!  He's 8 and light years ahead of the game.  It is probably just a security blanket.  I wouldn't freak out over it at 8.  Give him a year or so and see what happens.  He may mature enough on his own that he just drops it one day.  Really.  Kids do listen and one day just, poof, prove that they really did listen.   ;)

 

I have seen high schoolers write (not mine!!!), "and in this essay I am going to write about."  Yikesters!  That is horrid.  But an 8 yr old ending with The End......no way is that a biggie or a hill to die on.  All 3 of you are doing great.  (and as my kids will attest, I don't hand out unwarranted praise.  That is another "serioulsy.") 

[Gil]

How do you go about busting up run-on sentences? Or writing good conclusions for an essay or composition?

I probably use a lot of run on sentences in my writing so I need to break the habit myself before I can begin trying to seriously teach it to them.

And the "run out of breath" thing is a non-issue for Buddy--this kid has lungs of steel and can probably get through his whole essay with just one breath at the half way point.

 

His biggest challenge during oral presentations/speeches is slowing down his speech and using pauses.

 

I'm know that I have poor conclusions. I think I have gotten points off for poor conclusion on pretty much every paper I ever wrote.I'm not sure when they were supposed to have taught conclusions because I can't remember being told what to do, only that I'd done it wrong.

[8filltheheart]

Try these links for conclusions.  Googling university writing lab/center and the topic you want to read about will normally give you some good hits.  I like Purdue Owl and UNC-Ch b/c their resources are concise but thorough.

 

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/conclusions/

 

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/724/04/

[Tsuga]

1. It is fantastic for an eight year old.

 

2. I would focus, for an essay, only on the most egregious errors or confusing points (let hippocricket go, precious boy!) and let the rest just guide your teaching for the following year. Otherwise it will be covered in red and that's incredibly discouraging.

 

3. In that spirit, my main question would be, why did you choose to write about both loyalty and integrity, and not just one? What is the connection? Can you make that a bit clearer? Where should you put that in the essay?

 

However, I would emphasize that (3) is a big piece of work, and other than that I'd go for spelling or forgetting punctuation entirely, and that's it. So those three things.

 

Then I'd use smaller exercises for grammar, and for the next essay, only attack one grammatical issue and then focus on getting the idea across.

[mohop]

I'm impressed he can write so much at that age! My 7 yr old acts like I'm pulling teeth if I try to get her to write more than a couple of sentences.

 

With that said, for some of the things you are wanting to work with him in (run-on sentences, conclusions), I would do shorter writing assignments that focus on that skill. Or, you can take one paragraph from the writing composition and say, let's see how we can make this paragraph even better. Also, it may be easier to work on some skills with more fact-based pieces, rather than opinion pieces.

 

Mostly, though, I wanted to say that I hope you keep this and read it at his wedding. I especially love the part about supporting your wife's dreams and not laughing at them too much. Hehe.