Essay earns pizza celebration

Tanya Harding's fifth grade class at Sisters Middle School was treated to a pizza party earlier this month because of the efforts of one of its clan: Chance Gragert. Chance entered an essay contest sponsored by orthodontist Dr. Scot Burgess, writing the winning entry.

Gragert's award was a pizza party for his whole class at the middle school.

"I really haven't even read the essay. I am looking forward to reading it," said first-year teacher Harding.

Well she might be, since she is the subject of the composition.

"I wrote an essay about my teacher. It was called 'Cheer for your Teachers,'" Chance said. "I had to write about some of her quotes and about how nice of a teacher she is and a lot of really cool stuff about her."

Dr. Burgess organized the contest, in part, to show his support for the local school system and wanted a prize that would not only honor the winning student but the entire class.

The Nugget asked Chance about the most important thing that he has learned from Harding this year. He replied: "That is a really hard question. I have learned so many things from her. Gosh, the most important thing, gosh there is a ton. I had never really learned about pilgrims before, and that was really cool."

"I learned a lot of things about writing from Mrs. Harding, like personification and metaphors and things like that. It took me a good 30 minutes to write the essay, but it was fun because Mrs. Harding is a very nice teacher."