OVERALL WINNER
Piece One:  Who Were You Before?
Gangbanger 
    The communities I have chosen in the past have not been well maintained. One of the communities I have chosen in the past has been the streets. Choosing that community has not been too good for me because I was not the best me. 
    Before I chose that community I was a better girl, with no attitude. I went to the streets because when I started 8^th grade I began to change. I would have an attitude, and not let anyone be mean to me; I would be the mean person. In the streets, I would see how people were, I guess tough. So I became that too. I thought it was “cool.” 
    As I hung out in the streets I would change more and more. I started to not care about anything. Before this big change in me I was nice, polite, and cared about things and myself. Then I went to the streets and was not me. I was more like crazy, scary, mean girl. 
    And when I started high school, well…I was a worse me. I would ditch class and I was a slacker. Although I would say the streets fed me good, they didn’t. All they did is kinda have my back; when I needed them, some of the homies were there. But not all the time. 
    As I was more in the streets I started to notice that people thought I was a gangbanger. Deep inside of me, way deep, I knew that wasn’t me but I stayed on the streets because my friends were there and it felt like home. I began to get in trouble, and soon the police labeled me as a 34^th street gangbanger. They had an eye on me, and a picture. I didn’t like that because I wasn’t a gangbanger, but because I hung out there they thought I was. Deep inside I felt like, “What am I doing? I’m just ruining myself”.  I tried marijuana there and I had said I was never going to try it.  I felt guilty about what I was doing. I didn’t know how to tell my mom and that was when I realized I was changing officially into a bad person.
    When I started high school, I had Readers Workshop with a different teacher.  She was really mean, and she didn’t seem to like the class, which was mostly Mexicans.  I gave her attitude and made her day worse all the time.  By sophomore year, I looked at my schedule and saw I had Readers Workshop again.  I immediately got an attitude and thought, “well, I have another year where I can make a teacher’s day miserable.” 
    On the first day of class, I didn’t realize that this class was going to be a big deal in my life.  It would be another six weeks before I learned.

Piece Two:  What Did You Learn from Wicked or In the Heights?
    Being part of this Readers Workshop classroom has impacted me in so many ways and has changed me as a person. When we started the unit on judgment, I learned that I needed to become a better person and do well in school, because the person I was, was not the real me and wasn’t going to take me anywhere except somewhere I didn’t want to end up. I didn’t want to be like Elphaba, lonely with no friends, just enemies. That meant that I had to be nice and go to class.
    When I started this class, me and two other girls didn’t get along at all.  You could feel the tension in the room because we were from different sets (we hung out with rival gangs).  Because of that, we pretty much hated each other.  One day in class, me and one of the girls got into an argument.  I can’t even remember what it was about, but it got me so angry I could have hit her.  At the end of class, Ms. Jordan pulled me out and talked to me.  She told me to be the bigger person and just let it go and try to be friends with her and talk to her with no arguing or fighting.  My response to Ms. Jordan was, “No.  Why should I be the bigger person?”  But that day, I started thinking about being the better person and changing myself.  The next day, I was still mad, but I was also still thinking.  About a week later, Ms. Jordan put us in a group together, and I decided to just forget everything and do my work and see if I could be the person Ms. Jordan wanted me to be.  It didn’t work.  I was ready to be in the group, but she wasn’t.  She didn’t want to sit next to me, and before I knew it, I was mad all over again.  
    Three months later, Ms. Jordan asked the whole class a question about the song, “I’m not that Girl.”  No one in the class knew the answer.  Everyone was quiet.  We looked at each other’s faces, hoping for the words that would tell us that someone knew the answer. No one did.  We looked back at Ms. Jordan.  We were waiting for Ms. Jordan to give us the answer.  Instead, she simply repeated the question.  More silence.  Then, we heard the right answer.  We turned and looked.  It was this girl.  It was surprisingly amazing because the whole first semester, she didn’t say a word except for “I don’t know.”  In that moment, I was so proud of her that I got up and I gave her a high five.  In that moment, I felt like we were connected, friends I guess.  After that day, everything changed.
    At that moment, I learned that I wasn’t “that girl,” that girl who was mean and who bullied others.  At that moment, I realized something had changed within me.

Piece Number Three:  Who Are You Now 
    This class has made me a better person.  This year I started a group and joined cheerleading because this class helped me realize what I am capable of achieving.  Before this class, I didn’t think I could do it, but now I know I can do whatever I set my eyes on.  I plan to keep my greatness and look for more ways to be great. I am done with the old me. I am going to be a better and bigger person from now on, thanks to Ms. Jordan and my classmates who helped me realized who I really am inside and out. 
    I now understand that if I had kept acting the way I was, I wasn’t going to go anywhere.  I was ditching class, giving attitude.  When people called me out, it made me angry because I felt like, “what do you care?”  I wanted them to let me be because I was big and cool and I didn’t want to follow the class rules because that would have been uncool.  Now I see that it was a waste of my time giving attitude, ditching class, and disrespecting my teachers.  Now I know that it was my fault for not doing class work.  Now I know if teachers call me out, it’s for a reason.  
    In Readers Workshop, I saw that Elphaba was trying to do good but people thought that she was bad.  I knew that when I was doing bad, people would label me as bad, and I didn’t want that.  When I walk into this class today, I feel a big weight off of my shoulders. I forget about all my problems and feel that this is my family and home. This class believes in me and I believe in my class mates and Ms. Jordan because they are now part of my family.
    Freshman year, one of my family members wasn’t really there for me. Because he didn’t care, I felt like I didn’t.  I didn’t want to go to class or do work because he told me I was never going to go to college.  It hurt me that this relative would do those things to me.  We were close when I was little and when he told me that I was capable of nothing, it hurt me and my reaction to that was not to be sad but to be angry at the world.  He made me feel like he didn’t care, but I didn’t want him or anyone else to know he had hurt me because I was a big, bad person.  Going through all of that and being part of this class made me realize that I shouldn’t be angry.  I’m going to prove him wrong and show him that I can do whatever I decide to do.  It doesn’t matter who tells me what I can’t do.  I know I can.

Piece Number Four:  How do You Plan To Give Back To Society?
    I plan on giving back to society by starting a community service club. I decided to start this group with my best friend Jenny last year second semester because I thought it would be fun to give back to society. So we talked to our assistant principal, Ms. Minch, about how we could go help the homeless or do some community service things and we started talking about creating a group. We decided to name the group “Angel Touch” because we wanted to make it a children’s community service club. 
    Since we started the club, we have hosted little parties for the children, inviting them to a clubhouse hosted by one of our school’s secretaries.  At these parties, we try to have fun with the kids because their parents are low-income so their children don’t get much.  Some of the children’s parents don’t have time to take them out to parks or other fun places, so we try to have fun activities for them.  During Halloween, we had a Halloween party, where we had face painting and popcorn balls, and we played pumpkin games.  The kids enjoyed it and wanted to have another activity, so for Christmas, we decided on a Christmas party.  At that party, we watched The Polar Express, and we made gingerbread houses and had a lot of fun.
    Starting this group has changed me because it makes me feel good to see that I am doing good and giving back to society by putting smiles on children’s faces.  Looking back at the old me makes me feel disgusted because that person didn’t seem like it was me.  I was a bully and not the nice girl my parents had raised.  Now, I am proud of myself because I am doing bigger and better things in life.  My future is unlimited.

HONORABLE MENTION
Piece Number One:  Who Were You Before?
My Regret 

Wake up with careless breath
And the stupidity that’s inside my chest,
And the alcohol use has no reason but fun
Weed, and a cig, are the things I carried
To look cool in front of the older ones. 

But the regret in my heart and fear in my eyes