Perhaps journalism is in her future!

Last Monday Abbey came home from school with an assignment for her "Family Writes" project. Basically, this is a writing assignment that comes home once or twice a month and the kids typically have the whole week to work on it. Most of the assignments are fairly easy and include things like writing a conclusion paragraph to a given prompt or writing a short story, etc. So on Monday Abbey says "I have Family Writes due on Thursday (since there was no school on Friday), and I have to write about baseball. I need to go to the school website for the directions." So we pop on the school site only to find it was down. So I emailed her teacher and she said "Oh don't worry about it. The website crashed and we will be sending home the instructions tomorrow (Tuesday)." Alrighty, no problemo, we'll just wait until Tuesday to start working on it...! Then Tuesday comes and Abbey brings home her assignment. They were instructed to write a biographical essay on an influential baseball player (no more than 1000 words mind you), that would be sent to the Detroit Tigers (the Lakeland Spring Training office) for a contest! What...are you kidding me? My 3rd grader needs to write a biographical essay in 2 days??? So, we jump on the computer on Tuesday afternoon and we (as a family) decided to choose Ty Cobb, since he was a Detroit Tiger. We printed out the 15-20 page biographical information and we began reading it together. Man was there a lot of info! On Wednesday, Abbey got home from school and immediately started writing from the outline we worked on the night before. As the hours ticked away and Abbey was still trying to piece together a well developed essay, my frustrations grew with the unrealistic expectations of this assignment. So I thoughtfully penned a nice email to her teacher, venting my frustrations over this ridiculous project. In the mean time, Abbey finally finished writing her paper, not in time to make it to church though. She then began the remainder of her homework and called it a night shortly before 8:30. Later that evening I received an email from her teacher apologizing for the short notice and to not make a big deal about it. To just let Abbey write about "how baseball has helped change some one's life...such as a poverty stricken youth who now has an opportunity to get out of the type of life he has been living in." I sent a response back to the teacher saying we had finished the essay but I just didn't feel it was up to the standard that was expected out of the students. She told me not to worry about it, all would be fine. All of this long story to say, Abbey's essay was one of the ones chosen by the teachers to be sent to the Detroit Tigers. Out of the 90 3rd graders, one from each writing class was chosen. So a total of five essays out of 90 kids. Abbey is so excited. The Tigers will then judge all the essays (I would guess that other schools probably participated) and the winner will be asked to throw out the first pitch at one of the games for the Lakeland Tigers (the minor league here in town). Abbey has decided she needs to start practicing throwing the ball so she can make it all the way from the pitchers mound to home plate. So now I'm wondering...was her essay that good...or did the whiny wheel(that would be me) get thrown a bone? Whatever, Abbey got a little boost of confidence and is enjoying the glory. Who knows...if she gets picked, you will all be invited to the game!