Timberland Senior Receives Honorable Mention

senior Angela Deters has earned an Honorable Mention and $100 in the fifth annual Being an American Essay Contest. Deters beat out more than 24,000 other participants for a top spot in America’s largest high school essay contest conducted by the Bill of Rights Institute near Washington, D.C.

“The Being an American Essay Contest encourages students to see how vital it is to the future of our country and Constitution that they live out key civic values every day,” said Jason Ross, Bill of Rights Institute Vice President of Education Programs. “By thinking about the civic values evident in our Founding documents and in the lives of American heroes, students can begin to see how their own actions are significant in supporting the experiment in self-government started by our Founders.”

In her winning essay, Deters selected “initiative” as the civic value topic of her essay and thought Samuel Adams, American Founding Father, most embodied the American character.

Deters wrote, “People always say ‘dream big,’ but no matter how big dreams are, they will amount to nothing without initiative.”

Timberland English teacher Jeremy Boesch, who sponsored Deters in the contest, received a matching cash prize from the Institute.

“Angela is a superb writer: she conveys her message so fluidly,” said Boesch.  “Her greatest strength is that she sees her writing as a process and is very willing to commit to a constructive dialogue in the editing stage. Clearly, many others have admired her writing tenacity also (from the local to the national levels) as this is not her first writing accolade.  To say that I am proud of her is an understatement.”  

Deters runs on the Timberland track team, attended Girls' State last year through the American Legion Auxiliary and received multiple awards last month for her project "Using Microbes to Control Oil Spills" at the Tri-County Regional Science and Engineering Fair, earning her an invitation to the fourth annual I-SWEEP International Science Fair in Houston, TX May 4-9. 

She also is the recipient of a full tuition Leadership Scholarship to Truman State University where she plans to major in Math this fall.