Essay Contest
You may know the Optimist club for our extensive, K-12 basketball program, but the Optimists do much more in our community. We provide students with opportunities to compete in both essay and oratorical contests.  We encourage sportsmanship by awarding athletes who are nominated by coaches at our spring celebration ceremony. We also work with the Upper Arlington Police Department and provide awards for young people who demonstrate an understanding of and adherence to the law. We appreciate service learning with a middle school awards program. Finally, we arrange drug “take back” days to reduce the number of prescriptions either sitting in medicine cabinets, or being put into landfills and rivers.

Presently, we are inviting middle and high school students to participate in our annual    essay contest. For detailed information and contest rules, please click here or visit www.optimist.org. Students are asked to write an essay between 700 and 800 words that addresses the prompt: "When All the World’s Problems are Solved, is Optimism Still Necessary?" Essays must be submitted no later than February 11, 2019 to Deborah Tarr, dtarr@uaschools.org.   Deborah is a Language Arts teacher at Jones Middle School and   can be reached via email or phone, 614.497.5240, for questions. Submissions may be hand delivered to Jones, or submitted electronically using Google Docs sharing, or as an Email attachment. Please refrain from  including  personally  identifying  information  on  your essay, but do include it in a separate cover sheet, in the subject line of an Email, or in the Email generated by Google Docs.

Cash prizes are awarded to our middle school winners and our high school winners. First place receives $300, second place $200, and third place, $100. The overall winner of the contest will compete in a district competition where the winner receives a $2500 college scholarship. All winners will be recognized at our annual spring banquet in April. We sincerely hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to engage with the UA Optimist Club.

Warm Regards,
Deborah Tarr, Essay Contest Chairperson Paul Boyer, President, UA Optimist Club

This activity is not sponsored by Upper Arlington Schools.