Part III of III, this video collage showcases writing composed and compiled by freshmen at Peninsula High School for their final project of the year, altered books.

Altered books are a way for students to synthesize, evaluate, and improve the writing they have drafted. They find an unwanted or unloved book, a book on its way to the dump or trash or recycling bin, and save it by making it their own.

They find stanzas, paragraphs, and sentences strong enough to stand on their own -- Golden Lines, if you will -- and remove them from their original context.

These lines can be phrases from anything: poems, character development papers, annotations on sticky notes, advertisement analyses, formal self-reflections, and more.

In addition to these excerpts, students select two pieces of writing to include in their entirety. They glue these pieces and excerpts in their books and find relevant imagery to match.

Some people say the books are darker than they expected. Some people call them unabashedly optimistic. No one calls them dishonest. That hidden compliment goes to no one but the truth-tellers of PHS.

Derek Smith Less