Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Sample color-coded paragraph

At the beginning of the story, we meet the seventeen-year-old Jimmy Baca working the graveyard 

shift in an emergency room,

 

“mopping up pools of blood”

 

amidst the

 

“screams of mangled kids 

writhing on gurneys.”

 

A high school dropout who is unable to read or write, he is ashamed of  

himself and humiliated by his inability to articulate his feelings.

 

On the outside, he wears the

 

“mask of humility,”

 

but on the inside, he

 

“seethes with mute rebellion.”

 

The word “mute” here sig-

nifies how voiceless and powerless he feels. Further, the word “seethes” suggests that he is boiling 

with rage.

 

Although he cannot read, he recognizes the word “Chicano” on a history book

 

and he  

is motivated to steal it because the visual images of Chicanos speak to him and connect him to  

his culture. In essence, this empowers him and makes him proud.

When Baca steals the second book and teaches himself to read,

 

a door begins to open for him.  

He begins to rediscover the inner child who had been trapped inside.

 

The soothing words create  

a music and happiness inside him which comforts him and he feels “cured” as if from an illness

. 

But it is the act of writing, of putting words on paper, that ultimately sets him free. As he comes 

into language and experiences its power, he is transformed. He writes,

 

“But when at last I wrote 

my first words on the page, I felt an island rising beneath my feet like the back of a whale….I had  

a place to stand for the first time in my life.”

 

The image of the island indicates that he is no longer  

at sea. He finally feels grounded. No longer does he feel like a helpless victim, battling to stay 

afloat. Writing is his lifeline. Instead, for the first time, Baca feels born anew, powerful, and free.

 

He states, “I crawled out of the stanzas dripping with birth-blood, reborn, and freed from the 

chaos of my life.”