- April 22, 2024
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The family emphasizes reading in home life.
Alice Le Roux, a sixth grader at David C. Hinson Sr. Middle School, grew up exploring the world through books. Her family watches movies on Netflix on Friday and Saturday nights, but on other nights, they don’t turn the set on.
“We don’t live with television,” said her mother, Thada. “I believe it helps people. If she wants to discover something, she reads.”
Reading became Alice’s favorite pastime and literature is her favorite subject at school.
“She would read all the time,” her mother said.
The reading has led to writing, and Alice recently won first prize in the Literature Category for Volusia County in the PTA Reflections Program.
She competed in the middle school division and won at the school level before advancing to the county-wide contest. Her poem will now go to the state level.
The theme of this year’s contest was “The World Would Be a Better Place If.”
Alice wrote a poem called “Think Twice, Think Right,” about how people should always look for the good qualities in people and not judge them by their bad side.
Alice enjoys a variety of reading, including Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, but said she especially enjoys reading to orphans in a monastery each year when her family visits her mother’s home country, Burma, to visit relatives.
“I like to share the story with others,” she said.
Living with books and not television “just happened,” Thada said. They moved to America when her oldest son was in third grade and the children didn’t know English.
Thada said she would bring home a “basket of books” from the library to help them learn the language.
Alice’s older brothers are now away at college, one at Harvard University and the other at Stanford.
Alice got a lot of practice writing a few years ago when she kept a journal as the family sailed across the Atlantic in their 42-foot sailboat.
“It was amazing … and very long,” Alice said.
Even though it was long, she continues sailing today.
“There’s no other sport like it,” she said. “It’s special.’
Her mother said they sailed the ocean for the adventure and it took three years of planning.
“It took us a month,” she said.
In addition to reading, Alice is beginning to learn the violin, and enjoys basketball, volleyball, sailing and her job, caring for a neighbor’s cats while the owners are away.
Her mother said in addition to limiting television, the family also has a rule for computers. They are not allowed in the bedrooms, only in common areas.
She said she’s distrustful of the Internet.
“There are some trustworthy sites,” Alice said.
The PTA Reflections Program is administered in the schools by the county Parent Teacher Association to promote creative expression in the arts. Students may submit an entry in literature, musical composition, photography, and visual arts, and there are five divisions: primary, intermediate, middle, senior and special artist.
Think Twice, Think Right
By Alice Le Roux
To make life better
we should appreciate
everybody’s quality
and ignore the bad side we might see
If there was somebody stubborn
you can see him as inflexible
or as someone determined
and how you picture him would be your decision
Of course everybody has a default
nobody needs to be told that
but everybody has a positive aspect too
and that’s what you should look at
When you start to see something negative in someone
think anew
there should certainly be a value that gives another view
By using this advice
of thinking it twice
and following this social grace
the world would be a better place
