DOT DAY ESSAY CONTEST—SECOND PLACE WINNER
Scarlett Burke, 6th grade,
Richard J. Murphy School
My name is Scarlett Burke. I am 11 years old, and I go to the Murphy school. I am also a member of the Boys and Girls Club of Dorchester.
I walk and perform in the Dot Day Parade each year with the baton team. My team consists of many cultures: Dominican, Puerto Rican, Irish, African American, and Asian. I feel proud to represent the Club and to be a citizen of Dorchester. Some of my favorite places in Dorchester are Garvey Park, McConnell Park, and Ashmont Market, because the owners are kind and remember to order my favorite plantains when they run out.
The topic I chose for this essay is the first topic that asks “Dorchester’s young to start to imagine what that type of celebration should look like beyond the parade.” An idea I have to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Dorchester is a scavenger hunt for the week leading up to the parade. Each clue can be a fun or historical fact about Dorchester that leads you to the next place. Clues like this can be found in the zoo, Red Line train stations in Dorchester, Dorchester parks, restaurants, libraries, and firehouses. People will have one week to find all the clues!
The types of clues that will be hidden in plain sight are facts about a certain place or a historical fact about Dorchester and its early settlers, which will lead you to the next place until you reach the end. For example, some fun facts I researched on the internet about Dorchester are Garvey Park was originally over three times its current size. Another fact is that locals call Dorchester DOT, meaning that somebody or something is “from Dorchester”. Dorchester is also the first place to have a chocolate factory called the Walter Baker & Co. in the Lower Mills neighborhood. One last fact is that the first elementary school, Mather Elementary School, is the country’s oldest elementary school that opened in 1639.
These fun facts in the scavenger hunt would be open to the people who live and work in Dorchester including teachers, police, fire fighters, military, and veterans. The winner should be announced after the parade is finished to mark the end of this amazing, weeklong celebration. To plan such a big scavenger hunt there will probably need to be a big committee of people that know the history and locations of Dorchester very well. We could even ask the community to submit suggestions for facts and stories.
To help people who are participating in the scavenger hunt, there will be a map with all the places that have facts about Dorchester. People can take pictures of the clues that they find and mark off the places that they found clues off of. Once the people who are participating check off all of the places in Dorchester that have clues, they will email the organizers of the scavenger hunt their pictures and marked up map to prove that they found all of the clues.
On the Saturday before the parade, there should be a big cookout celebration located at Franklin Park, across from the zoo, so the most people can attend because it’s the biggest park in Dorchester. The party should be related to the Dot Day Parade, however, instead of performances, people will gather and be thankful with their neighbors that Dorchester was formed and turns out to be one of the best neighborhoods in Boston because of its value and culture. Dorchester supports different cultures, and people would be welcome to take videos and pictures of their heritage flags on a monster truck and share cultural meals together.
On the Sunday of the parade, I am imagining a monster truck or vehicle that showcases all the flags and cultures in the parade, so everyone is represented on that day. This monster truck would go before all the dancers and clubs, so the crowd can see how many cultures have built a life in Dorchester. Kind of like showing everyone the big picture of Dorchester. The monster truck that showcases flags, will also include the facts that are in the scavenger hunt.
The winner of the scavenger hunt will be rewarded with a vacation to Epcot Center located in Disney World where it has year-round celebrations of international festivals and food from all over the world!
The idea behind the scavenger hunt, the big celebration, the decorated monster truck is to recognize Dorchester’s history while celebrating the diversity that defines Dorchester and indigenous people who lived here long ago. I believe that the world would be different without different types of cultures and communities and Dorchester is a welcoming neighborhood to all people.
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Dorchester Day Essay Contest winners
This year’s Dorchester Day Essay Contest, sponsored by The Reporter in partnership with the Dot Day Parade Committee, invited students in grades 6-8 to reflect on the neighborhood’s history, future, and new ways to celebrate Boston’s biggest and most diverse neighborhood.
A panel of judges from The Reporter and the Forry Foundation for Community Journalism reviewed the entries submitted by April 24, and after careful consideration finalized our top three choices on May 8. It was not an easy decision as there were many strong entrants and every young participant’s work had merit and featured great ideas.
First-place honors went to Quinton Vo, whose essay on “Waterfront & Climate Future” imagined Dorchester’s 400th anniversary as both a celebration and a call to action. Scarlett Burke, also a Murphy School sixth grader, earned second place for her essay focused on Dorchester’s 400th anniversary. Third place was a tie that went to the Novoa brothers, Mikey and Jake, who are no doubt familiar with that dynamic. The twins, who are sixth graders at Pope John Paul II Academy-Neponset, delivered essays that lifted up their experiences growing up in Dorchester.
The winning essays are printed below. We’re excited to share them with our readers, and we are grateful to all of the participants in this contest.
–BILL FORRY
