Colin is a senior at HM Jackson High School. In addition to taking OnlineHS “Myths & Legends”, he took on the challenge to sign up for OnlineHS “College in the High School English Literature” English 462. This course is designed to help students become more thoughtful, skilled and confident readers and writers at the college level. In addition to earning high school English graduation credit, Colin also earned 5 college credits from Everett Community College!

Colin is indeed a smart, creative and talented person. After reading John Steinbeck’s “Death in the Dust” and listening to “This Land is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, Colin composed three additional stanzas to the song AND he also recorded himself singing it while playing his guitar. Colin states, “I plan to write about how if a writer as powerful as Steinbeck could bring such vivid attention to poverty in America today then we might have less of a domestic income disparity.”

Here’s what he wrote and sang:

In the camps I roamed through, a mother stood weeping,

One child lost to the hunger still seeping

Through the nation’s people, once felt some belonging,

This land was made for you and me.

 

When the jobs are taken and winter comes calling,

The houses built from boxes begin falling;

Families who stood tall, many now crawling,

This land was made for you and me.

 

Good times will return, at some late hour,

But the children gone to hunger’s power,

Will stay in resting, their voices calling,

This land was made for you and me.

Colin likes the flexibility of learning with OnlineHS. He takes face-to-face classes at JHS during 1st through 3rd period and then leaves campus to work on his OnlineHS courses. He says, “I’m a huge music listener, and my band ‘Three Legged Dog’ is an extension of that fact.” The assignments in OnlineHS English allow Colin to use his musical talents to, “best represent my skills, talents, and interests”.