Coloring books help children learn valuable life skills like developing fine motor skills and providing a way to communicate before knowing how to read and write. Coloring is often the first form of communication for kids. It’s how they show emotion and tell stories. For most of us, we pick out coloring books at the store with our favorite characters or with the prettiest colors. 

Sophomore Given Saw learned to color within the lines from his mother’s sketches. His mom would often draw him things to color. Growing up watching your mother create designs on paper and watching it come to life is magical to children. It’s not surprising that Saw became a young artist. When we think of Saw we most likely first think about the art that he creates but he does more than just that.

Moving from Burma to the United States in the fourth grade is not something easy for Saw’s family. Learning a completely new language is already hard, but learning it when you’re older than three is difficult. Luckily, Saw has been surrounded by people who are always cheering him on, and helping him feel more at home.

“I think that the show choir was the first one that definitely gave me a lot of close bonds with friends, and then musicals and plays,” said Saw.

He started trying out new things in middle school with his friends. Eventually, he began doing things for himself because he was interested in them and by high school his interests grew even more including music. The first play he did in middle school was the “Murder on the 518” which is a murder mystery one-act play. Even though his first role was a minor one, it sparked his love of the theater. It led to him becoming more involved in the school plays. Saw has gone on to do “The Wizard of Oz”, “Empowered”, “Mean Girls”, “Princess and the Pea” and now “Chicago” in April. 

“I think my favorite role was being Nico, who was like the Wicked Witch’s monkey assistant, because I just get to have fun on stage and just crawl around like a monkey,” said Saw.

His love of music includes show choir and chorale.

“I think for me, during the musical, my favorite thing to do is definitely the dancing and the singing,” said Saw.

Saw is also a two-sport athlete. He is on the boys swim and dive team. He also runs track in the spring. It was at track that some of his friends convinced him to join the swim team as a Sophomore for the first time. While most people join sports in 8th grade or earlier, as long as you work hard you can do great and Saw showed that. 

“I joined track, and then one of my friends, Max [Richards], he was in swim and he encouraged me a little bit to join swim, because he told me that the swim team was lacking in some people but now it’s not anymore,” said Saw. “Another one of my friends, Emily [Troster], she’s also a really good swimmer, and I saw her swim, and I thought it would also be a good idea to start swimming at the start of this season. I wasn’t that good at swimming. I would do like, one lap and get super tired. But now that I stuck with it and I committed myself to it, I’ve gotten way better.”

He takes his inspiration from his mom and celebrities online like Billie Eilish. Saw also gets his inspiration from being in nature looking up at the clouds and online for art. When he got the opportunity to create the mural for the Tiger Lair school store, he came up with the idea using some inspiration from tiger poses online.  He chose colors for the rough sketch on paper and then started painting it on the wall. He added in details as he went, spending many days after school working on the mural by the tiger store. 

“I was working pretty hard on that, and it was like, almost every day after school,” said Saw. “I also had a lot of fun looking at people’s reactions and being like, ‘Oh wow, that’s pretty good’.” 

Besides tigers, he also likes to paint and draw different animals, bugs, and things in nature. He also likes 

to make sculptures out of things like cardboard, wires and foil.

Outside of these extracurriculars and school he also enjoys being outside surrounded by nature and exploring new places around town.

Joining things like show choir and musicals can help make community connections and meet new people at school. It also can offer opportunities to get out of your comfort zone and find something new that you could like. 

“I think if you want to get involved, maybe you can bring another friend to join in with you, or you can just go in without knowing anything,” Saw said. “That’s totally fine too, because that’s what I started to do once my friends weren’t that interested in doing plays and musicals anymore, and you’ll definitely make new friends.”