It's time for us to start writing our This I Believe essay. TIB was a program that first aired on radio in the 1950's. The host was a famous journalist named Edward R. Murrow. He believed that personal statements about beliefs would encourage people to find common ground--even if our beliefs are different.
The challenge in a TIB essay is to clearly say what you believe--not what you DON'T believe and then focus in on a moment or moments that SHOW how this belief came to be or SHOW the way the belief works in your world.
A bigger challenge is to CHOOSE the belief that you want to write about--and we'll spend some time today talking and exploring so that we can all choose something to write about.
The biggest challenge, of course, is to write a TIB essay that will capture your listeners with vivid language and images--you need to create word pictures in the radio listener's mind and be clear about your main idea in both your introduction and your conclusion. You have to think about your audience and what they need even more than when you are writing something that can be read and re-read.
We are going to start on our essays by identifying the belief and the moment, using a graphic organizer. Please bring this in by next week.