OVERVIEW
As the capstone experience of the MAXCourage curriculum, each student writes a personal narrative essay about courage in their own life. The process of brainstorming, writing, and revising with their teacher and classmates ties together all of the skills they have been building throughout the program—reading, writing, discussion, critical thinking, and social-emotional reflection. In February, a panel of volunteer judges reads every essay submitted and nominates between 60 and 80 students for publication in MAXCourage’s annual anthology, The Courage of Children.
DRIVING QUESTION (PROMPT): How have you experienced courage in your life?
CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS: A successful student author will…
- Narrative Development: A successful student author writes a complete personal narrative which develops a sequence of events from the student’s life, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. (For more specific narrative writing guidelines, see the Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6). We strongly encourage students to tell a story about their own experiences, but they may also choose to write about how they grew from witnessing the courage of someone else in their life.
- Reflection: A successful student author reflects on their actions, thoughts, and emotions about their experiences, and communicates a larger idea or message about the meaning of courage in their life. Though our student authors’ story topics vary widely, the common theme of courage unites them all.
- Voice: A successful student author channels their own unique writer’s voice to make their story heard!
Read examples in our 2024 book!
ELIGIBILITY & ENTRY RULES
- Any middle school (5th–8th grade) student is welcome to submit an essay. 1 entry per student.
- Essay submissions must be the student’s original work. The use of artificial intelligence is prohibited.
- Essays should be around 1 typed page, preferably 550 words or less. There is no minimum word count.
- At this time, we can only accept essays in English.
HOW TO SUBMIT
Beginning in SY22-23, MAXCourage transitioned to a blind, anonymous essay selection process, in order to protect students' privacy and to counteract potential unconscious bias in judging. To ensure anonymized review...
- Attach each student essay as its own file on your Submittable form (rather than submitting a single PDF containing your entire class's essays). The submission form allows you to submit up to four "classrooms" of student work, each of which can hold a maximum of 75 files.
- If possible, please ensure that each student's name is included in their essay's FILE NAME, but do NOT include any identifying information, such as student names, teacher names, or school names, within the essay document (i.e., no heading at the top of the essay).
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 31, 2025, 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. While we encourage teachers to run MAXCourage in the fall or winter when possible (for timeliness and ease of getting in touch with the selected students), any courage essays written between February 1, 2024 and January 31, 2025 are eligible for selection.
Questions? Contact our Program Director, Molly McCafferty, at molly@maxcourage.org for support!