My younger brother, Collin, is an eighth grade student at a charter school in Houston, Texas. We are from a Caucasian, upper-middle class family that has lived in the suburbs for as long as I can remember. I went home for Fall Break and worked with him on his writing and I found that my brother is a lot more talented at writing than I would’ve given him credit for. He was always the type of kid who had trouble telling stories in less than ten minutes so, for him to be a decent writer at thirteen, I was pretty surprised. When I was in middle school, I always had my mom correct my papers for any errors. Due to this, I feel as if I did not develop into an independent writer as soon as I should have. I still struggle with my creative writing. My brother, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. According to my mom, he doesn’t let her touch his papers and from what I saw when I worked with him, is writing excellent work on his own.
              When I went home, I asked him to pull out any writing he’d done for this year’s Language Arts class. All he had was a journal with a couple sentences here and there he had written for assignments. I didn’t think they would work for this case study so I asked if he had any past work we could look at. We ended up finding a creative writing essay from seventh grade to work on. He explained how his teacher had them play a videogame centered around colonists and Native Americans. Afterwards, they had to come up with a character and speak as if they were in their shoes. Collin chose the point of view of a male colonist fighting in a war against the Native Americans. This assignment was very creatively enabling for his classmates and I could see how Collin was able to run with it like he did.
              After reading through his paper, I was so impressed with his ability to describe detail and action. His diction and use of analogies was awesome: “With the only strength I had, I crawled towards the house like a baby learning how to walk for the first time” (1). Reading sentences like these, I didn’t think I was going to need to help him with anything. I kept reading and noticed a couple things such as the overuse of “that” as well as a few misplaced commas. I suggested he read his paper out loud and he caught most of the “that’s” and deleted them. I told him to read over those sentences again and he understood that it sounded crisper and better without some many of them in the paper.
            I also had him read his paper aloud again to focus more on content. I noticed he could’ve used several other description sentences within the body of one of his paragraphs. He was trying to describe how, “while one of the men pulled the arrow out of my leg, the other guys were talking strategy” (1). He had made this sentence clear, however, the following sentences did not move from one thought to the next in a very coherent manner. He read that section aloud once more and he realized there was a disconnect between his ideas. I asked him a couple questions like, “what happened next?” “Did the arrow getting pulled out hurt?” “How would you describe this feeling?” After this, he was able to add a couple of description sentences, which helped the scene be described in a little more detail. And just as I could’ve predicted, those couple sentences were beautiful. I think the problem with this assignment was how little time they spent with it. The paper was one page and three sentences on the next; double-spaced.  If given more time, this paper could’ve turned into a whole short story if Collin wanted to. It was a great start to a multitude of possibilities he could have turned it into.
            I was so appreciative of how receptive he was to constructive criticism. I haven’t been home to just simply be around him during his years of middle school because I’ve been away at college and we rarely talk on the phone. I wasn’t sure how he’d react when I told him I needed him to do something for me. He was very gracious and took my suggestions to heart, understood what he had done wrong, and changed what needed to be changed. 
             Collin makes meaning through his art and his sports. He is a beautiful swimmer and glides over the water like a graceful dolphin as he’s doing butterfly stroke in the pool. He is also a talented soccer player. Most of the time, he plays goalie and gets on the ground unafraid of getting kicked in the face or hit with the ball. I got to see him do both of these things for the first time in over a year and I, again, was very impressed with my baby brother. Collin also makes meaning through his art. At his charter school, they have what are called “see’s its”. These classes are basically electives, and they get to sign up for several different ones throughout the semester. A couple semesters he’s chosen glassblowing and with this class, he’s made several ornaments, a checkers board, and other little trinkets. He also makes art with his writing. I got to see this with his paper we worked on. As he gets older and develops his voice through writing, I know he will be able to express himself with ease.
            If I were able to work with Collin for longer than I did, I believe I would’ve gotten to do more activities like a multimodal project of sorts. However, I have the rest of our lives to use him as a guinea pig I suppose. From what I can tell, Collin is turning into quite the ladies man, as well as an excellent creative writer.