Example of Descriptive Essay 2 : From A Celebration of Teachers

            The teacher who did the most to encourage me, as it happens, my aunt.

            She was Myrtle C. Manigault, the wife of my mother’ s brother Bill, when she taught me in second grade at all-black Summer School in Camden, New Jersey. Now she is Mrs. Myrtle M.Stratton, retired and residing in Haddonfield, New Jersey.

            During my childhood and youth, Aunt Myrtle encouraged me to develop every aspect of my potential, without regard for what was considered practical or possible for black females. I liked to sing, she listened to my voice and pronounced it good. I couldn’t dance; she taught me the basic jitterbug steps. She took me to the theatre – not just children’s theatre but adult comedies and dramas – and her faith that I could appreciate adult plays was not disappointed.

            Aunt Myrtle also took down books from her extensive library and shared them with me. We had books at home, but they were all serious classic. Even as a child I had a strong bent towards humor, and I will never forget the joy of discovering Don Marquis’s Archy & Mehitabel through her.

            Most important, perhaps, Aunt Myrtle provided my first opportunity to write for publication. A writer herself for one of the black newspaper, the Philadelphia edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, she suggested my name to the editor as a “youth columnist”. My column, begun at age fourteen, was supposed to cover teenage social activities – and it did – but it also gave me the latitude to write on many other subjects as well as the habit of gathering material, the discipline of meeting deadlines, and, after college graduation six years later, a solid portfolio of published material that carried my byline and was my passport to a series of writing jobs.

            Today Aunt Myrtle, independently and through her organization (she is a founding member of The Links, Inc.), is still an ardent booster of culture and of her “favorite niece”. She reads omnivorously, attends writers’ readings, persuades her clubs to support artists, and never lets me succumb to discouragement for very long. As I told her theatre club recently, she is “as brilliant and beautiful and tough as a diamond”. And, like a diamond, she has reflected a bright, multifaceted image of possibilities to every pupil who has crossed her path.

(385 words)

Reference:

Hunter, K. (1997). from A Celebration of Teachers. In M. K.Ruetten, Developing Composition Skills (pp. 72-73). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.