Lake Zurich student first in national essay contest
Joseph McGrath couldn't stop smiling after finding out he took first place in a national essay-writing contest.
It's the second year in a row a Lake Zurich student won first place for his grade level in the 4-year-old InvestWrite competition, offered by the Foundation for Investor Education.
The Fox Elementary School fifth-grader is one of only two Illinois winners of the national contest for the 2008 spring semester. Whitney Elementary School fifth-grader Ian Murray took sixth place in the contest.
The awards were announced Tuesday morning at a surprise assembly before Fox students and staff.
"I didn't know until today," Joseph said, clutching his top prize, a Toshiba laptop computer. "It's very exciting. I wanted to win. I didn't know if I really could."
Last spring, Austin Kuehr, then an 11-year-old fifth-grader in the gifted math program at Adams Elementary School, nabbed the same award -- a first for his school and the state.
Joseph also won a trip to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., with his parents, and a trophy for his school.
"I'm shaking," said his mother, Lucy of Lake Zurich. Joseph's parents were tipped off to the award ahead of time and were on hand to see him honored.
"I'm so proud of him. He's an amazing kid who loves to read and apply what he's learned and he's done that throughout his school career," his mother said.
Joseph was among 720 fourth- and fifth-graders nationwide to reach the finals. Roughly 2,800 essays were written in those grades alone. The entries were prejudged by classroom teachers, out of which 720 essays were submitted online for judging.
More than 9,000 students nationwide in grades four through 12 wrote essays for the spring 2008 InvestWrite essay contest.
Joseph, who is in the gifted math program at Fox, researched newspaper articles and Internet sources for stock market insight.
"He's an absolutely wonderful, dedicated student," said gifted math teacher Laura Raineri, who also received a laptop computer and a trip to New York for a stock market workshop.
Joseph's 700-word essay focused on how current events such as the Iraq War and environmental trends such as hybrid cars could influence the stock of Royal Dutch Shell company, a global oil, gas and chemicals producer.
"The armies that fight in the war need gas for their vehicles, power for their resources, and heat for their camps. Throughout the Iraq war, Royal Dutch Shell's stock has been slowly rising," he wrote.
The essay contest is a component of The Stock Market Game program, in which roughly 34,000 Illinois students participated this year.
Joseph's team ranked 12th out of 450 regional teams that participated in the game, competing against all grades up to high school.