Introductory Paragraph Student/Teacher
Model
(based on the planning map)
Rx for Drugs: Take only as Directed is from a civic contest entitled "Why I Should Say No to Drugs"
Rx for Drugs: Take Only as Directed
Drugs! They are wonderful! They kill pain,
fight disease, and save lives. Drugs are horrible! They ruin
lives, maim the body, and kill their victims. Drugs abound--everywhere--and
whether or not these drugs become pain relievers or painful addictions,
disease fighters or disease promoters, life savers or sure killers is the
choice of the user. Undeniably, drugs used in a restrained, controlled
manner can create a wide world of medical wonders for almost every kind
of ailment imaginable, but drugs used in a haphazardly nonmedical, abusive
fashion can create a horrid hell or horrors for those who fall prey.
It is to this latter addictive, narcotic, abusive use of drugs that humankind
the world over should proclaim a loud, resounding "No."
Commentary
This student has used the contrast method from the
student planning map to begin her introductory paragraph. A bit farther
along in the year in the writing process, she has become skillful enough
to collapse her introductory paragraph into her concessions paragraph as
she has taken off with her own writing style. Students who get enough
practice are able to make all sorts of effective adaptations.
Teacher Model
I write with my students and have the audacity to share that writing. After reading the short story "Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets," and discussing near death experiences, my class and I began essays. Following is one that follows the planning map. It is not polished but is worth sharing.
On Getting Priorities Straight
"Please God, give me one more chance," prayed the mother
of two as she lay at the bottom of a poisonous snake and insect-infested
ravine for the second consecutive day. No one had found her yet.
She thought of the stupid way she came to be in this predicament.
Trying to make her 10' o'clock appointment at the hairdresser, she had
rushed out of her house and down the abandoned highway at breakneck speed
before she the car she was driving had flipped over the arm of the bridge
into the snake pit below. Not many people took this route, and no
one saw the accident. As she writhed in pain and wondered how much
longer it would be to be back in her nice, cozy home with the husband and
children she dearly loved. They were bound to be frantic by now,
she thought. "I should have spent more time with Clem and Mother
and Father." "They are both sick and Clem obviously loves me, she
wailed out loudly at one time.
All I could ever do is get prepared for the next client
as though we did not have enough money to more than take care of our needs."
I should have listened to Clem and stayed at home with the children.
This remorseful mother like the protagonist in the short story "Contents
of a Dead Man's pockets," is experiencing a near death ordeal. Both
she and the narrator in the story saw issues which previously had been
of utmost importance suddenly take on insignificant status. Indeed,
a life-threatening experience can be an opportunity for a person to reorder
the priorities in his/her life.
The succeeding paragraph follows the concessions paragraph planning map.
Granted, the preceding illustrations are somewhat extreme. It would be a sad statement indeed to make about human beings to suggest that the only way meaningful and lasting change can take place is through some sort of catastrophe. That is not the essential argument put forth here or in the short story upon which the idea is based. And, not all people who have such experiences have lasting changes for that matter. But many of them do. And, those that do have, for centuries been the subjects of writers who comment upon the human condition. These writers are older than Charles Dicken's character Scrooge and as contemporary as the philosophical Steven Coven who advises everyone to "Begin his life with the end in mind." "What would you look back and thing is important if you were lying on your death bed?" he muses. Be those arguments as they may, good things can come from bad experiences.