Dawn Bowker Award 2011

We present the Dawn Bowker award for two reasons: one to remember Dawn Bowker and two to honor students here at SMS that display some of the same characteristics as Ms. Bowker.

This year’s 8^th grade award winner shares the attribute of grace with Ms. Bowker.  We can look at grace in two ways. A person can show grace with people, and they can be graceful in difficult situations.  Dawn and this 8^th grader share such grace.

Both Ms. Bowker and this 8^th grader illustrate grace with people. Ms. Bowker became a teacher because she found joy in helping and seeing others succeed.  I have witnessed the same grace and encouragement with this 8^th grader. It was during practice. I was helping a student rewrite a paragraph while our new hero was sitting next to us listening in. I was going step by step through this student’s paragraph, and it was a great paragraph. It had a clear and interesting topic sentence, fantastic transitions, and convincing elaboration. As I was telling this student how wonderful his paragraph was, I could see out of the corner of my eye our hero at the very edge of his seat grinning from ear to ear. As I finished praising the paragraph and exclaiming excitingly about the genius of his closing sentence.  Our young hero sprang out of his chair and gave the other student a high five. He was so happy to see another student having success. His celebration in someone else’s success is grace.

But one can also have grace while handling difficult situations. Like some of you Dawn had to deal with difficult situations. She had to solve problems, overcome obstacles and face challenges.  How she handled those difficult times was grace. Ms. Bowker showed grace by overcoming obstacles with a positive attitude and hard work. Like Dawn, our 8^th grade recipient of the Dawn Bowker award faces difficult situations with grace. Like many of you he battles challenges, overcomes stumbling blocks, and is forced to solve problems that may not be fair for him to have to face, but he does face them, and he faces them with a smile. At the same time he does not simply believe that problems will simply go away; he meets them head on with perseverance. When classes get tough he volunteers to go into practice, when he is frustrated with a class assignment instead of giving up and becoming off task, he buckles down and systematically and strategically solves the problem and works harder. In class and in the halls he works hard to show grace in difficult situations.

Grace is not easy nor is it common to see such grace in an 8^th grader. “Everything good comes from grace, and grace is an art and art does not come easily.”  - Norman Maclean

It is my pleasure to present the 2011 Dawn Bowker award to Josh Gruber.