Rubric: 4-H Writing Equity Challenge 2023

To be completed by judges:

Use this Evaluation Rubric as a scoring guide to assess and articulate specific components and expectations for the 4-H Writing Equity Challenge.

Review the following examples:

Things Done Well Things That Could Be Improved Score
Equity Message: 20 points

Does your message effectively address an important equity issue?

  • The topic addresses a significant equity issue
  • The reader can understand the topic and its connection to equity
  • The importance of the topic is clear throughout the piece
  • The relevance of the topic to current times is clear
Intentionality: 20 points

Is your message getting across?

  • The information included is appropriate for the intended audience
  • The text is well-organized, appropriate to the genre
  • The text is coherent (it makes sense altogether)
Writing Moves: 10 points

Do the choices you make as an author add to the message and effectiveness of your piece?

  • A strong hook engages the reader
  • Writing is intentional — all words add to the piece
  • The writing inspires the reader to know more about the issue
  • A call to action or move for change is apparent
Learning: 50 points

Can you explain what you learned from this challenge?

  • The writer can explain what they learned about equity by doing this challenge.
  • The writer can explain what they learned about writing by doing this challenge, (including what they found easy and difficult and what they would do differently next time).
  • The writer can briefly explain why they chose this equity topic and a particular format (essay, poem, etc.).
Total Points:

Example 1: Letter to the Local Education System

A Letter to WCPSS
Kevin Xavier Garcia-Galindo
The Voices of Our People: Nuestra Verdades
Juntos 4-H North Carolina

Dear Wake County School System,

I am a student who is enrolled in one of the schools in your school system. I think that you should value the Hispanic community enrolled in your schools. I want you to know the experiences that Hispanics have to go through everyday. Everyone has a story and here is mine.

I was the first from my family to be born here in the United States–meaning that I’m a first-generation immigrant. I think that I’m in a weird place because I’m tied to both my parents’ cultures equally as much as I am to my new American culture. I am as much a product of the environment I grow up in and the influence my parents have on me. I don’t lean either way.

Being a first-generation immigrant is like having an identity crisis. It is not knowing what to do when it comes to checking that box. Are you white, Native American, or Native Hawaiian? I don’t know. Does it really matter? Yet, I feel great pride when I speak about where I come from. Even though I’ve only been there once and my memories are blurry, I can still say that it is my home and that is where I want to be.

The country of the United States can be so ungrateful sometimes. I don’t get how someone can receive fruit from the hand of a laborer but slap him with his other. How can someone actively benefit from another and then ask them to leave before they have a piece of the pie?  We bring gifts and people are so quick to take them.

In my mind, we are those gifts. We are the future of the United States. We all have a deep built-in hunger for more. All immigrant children want to achieve more. We are complicated individuals in a journey to discover what we want to do in life. I hope that you can understand the struggle we go through and that our families go through.

I want to thank you for all the support you have given to our community. There are translators at every school and I have never had a problem with a school paper that did not have a Spanish version. I just want to ask you to work harder on getting information out to the people who need it most: our community, who has a hard time being informed.

Example 2: Poetry

Feels Right
By Briza Cruz
The Voices of Our People: Nuestra Verdades
Juntos 4-H North Carolina

The tongue of my people
Is used to divide us from the world
And our accents, to define who we are
But, only on the outside.
The tongue of my people
Is the identification of our hopes.
The tongue of my people
Is the spirit that speaks to us
In our hardest days.
The tongue of my people
Is the heart of the motherland
Perhaps lost in translation,
But never in dreams.
The tongue of my people
Is the voice of our past,
Our present, and our future.
The tongue of my people
Is to us what feels right.