WHIZ KIDS: Second-Grade Students Discover the “Whiz” in Each Other

Ryan Wright, a second-grader in David Paul’s class at , discovered what makes his classmate, Joseph Murray, special.

“Joseph is goalie in lacrosse and he is the best one. He blocked 50 shots in his career,” he wrote.

If that’s a true story, Ryan might be a budding sports journalist.

On Thursday all the students at Lutherville Lab participated in the 14^th Annual Writer’s Workshop. Each classroom hosted a writer—a member of the news media, a magazine executive, a police investigator, and a college music professor, to name several. Any adult who uses writing in their professional life was fair game to teach the kids about strong written communication skills.

PTA president Kelly Ozbolt has been organizing the workshop for two years.

"We have so many willing and talented individuals in our community, so finding guest speakers has been an easy task,” she said.

Ozbolt invites a very diverse group of professionals so the students can benefit from writing skills acquired across a variety of disciplines and careers.

Patch was represented, of course. We taught the students why we write about hyper-local news stories, and why kids are important too. The Whiz Kid column focuses on local, school-aged children doing outstanding things.

This time, the kids did the work for us.

David Paul’s second-graders interviewed each other and wrote their own mini-columns about what makes their classmates special.

Uliana Chembrovich wrote, “Eric McChesney is talented in building Legos, like last night he built a Lego pirate ship by himself. Eric is an honest person, but sometimes nobody believes him except me.”

We believe Eric. What he wrote in return about Uliana was enthusiastically seconded by their teacher.

“Uliana is a whiz kid because she illustrates books and writes books about horses,” wrote Eric. “She can read a lot of books. And big books, too.”

Aarushi Tyagi is a young writer who nailed her details. “Kyla Klein is special,” she wrote, “because she will be in a play called Welcome to Bedside Manor. It will be on May 17, which is next week. She plays a patient. It is at 6 p.m. if you want to see it. It is at Pumpkin Theater.”

Nice job, Aarushi. We’ll be there.

Allen Chen thinks his classmate Zhane Rezk has a future playing soccer, and Patch thinks Allen will be hired soon to cover sports. Read Allen’s details:

“My partner Zhane thinks he’s a whiz kid because he is good at soccer, because he is most likely to score the goal every time. The first game, Zhane scored three, and his ‘enemy’ scored only one. Then, the second game, Zhane scored five goals and his ‘enemy’ only scored two goals and Zhane was the second champion of soccer games. Last year and the year before that, Zhane was always first place. Zhane is mostly defense and Zhane is sometimes offense.”

Chiara Menegatti thinks Linda Phan is pretty special.

“Linda is a whiz kid because she is good at origami,” Chiara wrote. “She likes to make hearts, cranes, star boxes, flowerpots, dinosaur heads, bunnies, purses, pianos, wallets, strawberries and fish.”

We love the details.

Maggie Mackenzie was struck by a precious detail of her classmate, Caroline Cook, and like a good writer, she included it.

“Caroline is really good at dancing and art and singing,” wrote Maggie. “And Caroline is good at roasting marshmallows on camping trips.”

Tori Vidmar and Molly Barron congratulated each other on the donations they’ve made. Tori collected and contributed money to Lutherville’s fundraiser, and Molly donated food and blankets to an animal shelter with her girl scout troop.

“Molly’s girl scout troop number is 4621,” wrote Tori, getting all the facts.

Nicely done.

Will Harkness credited his writing partner with saving his own life.

“Jacob Dyer saved Will Harkness’ life by putting pillows on the couch so Will would not break his bones,” wrote Will. “He said, ‘I got to put some pillows on the sofa!’ The sofa was very hard so Will would have broke his bones.”

Sometimes it’s the small things that can make a kid a hero to another.

Jacob Dyer, in return, wrote how Will saved his own brother from crossing the street without looking. The second grade is full of heroes.

Thanks to the students for their hard work, and more importantly, for sharing what makes each of you special.

This column is all for you.