HOT SPRINGS — Language arts teacher Donna Kent has been making a difference by showing students how to use writing and feel confident about it.
She has had her share of successes as a career educator in Lakeside schools and now St. John School in Hot Springs.
Last year, she nominated the poem “The First 7” by student Sophie Rudder of Hot Springs into a national Creative Communication Contest. Rudder won her age category for the piece about the creation of the world.
 Excerpts from student essays Click here |
More recently, a point of school pride showed in a collection of student essays about what it feels like to sit quietly in St. John Church. The essays have been bound into a booklet as an example of students who “have grown into mature, faith-filled followers of Christ,” according to the introduction written by principal Elizabeth Shackelford.
Kent got the idea from a teacher’s support material that suggested students practice descriptive writing by sitting in a room and writing about the experience.
“I didn’t just send them in there blind. We analyzed Stephen Crane and his descriptive style,” Kent said.
Her students had been reading “The Red Badge of Courage,” which is full of descriptive language.
What surprised her was the depth by which students noticed parts of the church that may easily be missed.
“I did not tell them anything about how to write these. They were very moved spiritually,” Kent said. “I really wanted them to absorb what that feeling was.”
One student, Caitlin Johnstone, wrote hers in the third person.
This unique experience for students has been one of many that Kent has used to try to teach students to embrace writing so that it is a topic they don’t fear. She teaches students in the fifth through the eighth grades.
A more common experience is for her to teach with an electronic device called a Symodium. The device links all of the laptops of her students so that she can see and praise them in front of the class when they write something that shows the student is making progress. A grant paid for the laptops.
Kent arrived at St. John five years ago. Prior to that, she spent 14 years teaching at Lakeside schools.
She and her husband, Terry, have four children and four grandchildren. They attend First United Methodist Church in Hot Springs.
One of the aspects of St. John she repeatedly praised was the lack of discipline problems at St. John School. Her student-teacher ratio in one eighth-grade class was 8:1. The small class size means that Kent doesn’t have to raise her voice for her students to hear her.
She reviewed the work of Lizbeth De La Paz of Hot Springs and note cards that the eighth grader had created for a research topic. It was one more way to show how the students are learning the way to organize their thoughts before they begin to write.
“We’ve talked about the closing idea,” she said. “They know where they are going, they give those details and they close the thought.”
For now, Kent is focused on the daily challenge of teaching students to write and think critically in ways that challenge them.
In one persuasive writing technique, she sent some of her students on a mission.
“My sixth graders just went down to the kindergarteners, to persuade them to eat their vegetables,” she said.
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Excerpts from student essays
“God’s Glory in St. John’s”
“Arches spread tall and glorious across the whole church, and suddenly an overwhelming feeling of tiny insignificance invades one’s being so that the realization of our true place in the scheme of things is inevitable.”
Andrew Larey, Royal
“The Good Day”
“As I walk in the St. John’s Church, I feel the spirit coming in…Everybody comes in happy and some leave wondering if their life is how God wants them to live.”
Juan Laguna, Hot Springs
“A Feeling that I Will Never Forget”
“When I look upon the altar, I stare with amazement at how truly symmetrical everything is; nothing is out of place … As I sit, the smell of incense burns my nose and I am reminded that God always hears our prayers. The feeling of tranquility I have when I visit St. John’s Church is a feeling that I will never forget.”
Cagney Kilgroe, Malvern
“A Breath Taking Scene”
“Draped all around the cross is a vibrant gold ribbon and at the bottom of the cross there are many flowers bordering a picture of Jesus. She looks forward at the altar and she notices that behind it there is a beautiful pinkish glow to everything and that the glow gets lighter as it gets closer to the crucifix … Leaving the chapel, she realizes that the peace and quietness is staying with her as she walks out the door.”
Caitlin Johnstone, Hot Springs
