On a typical weekday afternoon, dozens of children gather together on low couches and tables to read and write. With books and pencils in hand, these children in urban Los Angeles aren’t part of a formal classroom. They are students – ranging from ages 6 to 18 – who take part in the free after-school tutoring and writing skills programs at 826LA.

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1. Dianna Agron has a birthday wish!

Upcoming birthday girl Dianna, volunteer Cat, and AmeriCorps member Corey cheer 826LA at 2010's Spelling Bee for Cheaters.

For the second time, 826LA’s rock star supporter Dianna Agron (of FOX’s hit series Glee) is going to have a birthday in support of our awesome student programming. Students at 826LA all get to work on their creative and expository writing skills for free; now we hope you’ll give them a little Glee.

Our blog is promoting the Cause created by Dianna’s wonderful online fan community, which is located right here: http://www.causes.com/causes/649858-826la-project-dianna-agron-birthday-project. By spreading word via Facebook and showing the 826LA mission is a cause that matters to you, you’ll help fund the student writing services (like tutoring, field trips, in-schools, and workshops) that Dianna supported just a few weeks ago at “Spread the Word”.

2. Order a Valentine’s Day message from a kid and have it delivered to a lucky recipient!

Wouldn't your valentine love you if this album showed up in the mail with an original poem?

The Echo Park Time Travel Mart, our so-impossible-it-just-has-to-be-possible store, is now taking orders for the commissioning of Valentine’s Day Poems. For an astoundingly limited time, you can hire one of the student writers of 826LA’s Venice and Echo Park service populations to create a note in verse (for friends, lovers, lovers-to-be, or someone you just happen to admire).

Click here to order what will surely be the finest poem you’ve ever read. It will come with a copy of Chickens in Love, our CD of songs written around student-penned lyrics, and shipping is included in the purchase price.

Since September, we’ve worked with UCLA’s Civic Engagement program to benefit from the help of a dedicated intern, Sociology major Hope Allen (one of more than a dozen peerless 826LA interns who give their time because they believe in the power of student literacy). Hope’s been involved in a plethora of our workshops, from Personal Statement Day to the clubs in afternoon tutoring, but she’s been a particularly familiar face during the evenings on Wednesdays: that’s when we hold nighttime class to produce The Venice Wave, one of our student newspapers.

Intern Hope works with groups of student varying in size from dozens to just one.

Hope’s patience has been particularly valuable working with a 1st grade writer for The Venice Wave named Gino. A recently-arrived immigrant to the United States who attends Charnock Road Elementary on the Westside, Gino is bright and endlessly talkative. But he was recently surprised when it came time to pick research topics for the newspaper and a one-to-one conversation with Hope revealed something that shocked him: the United States is at war, and soldiers may be fighting in Afghanistan as we speak.

At only 6, Gino has a tough time wrapping his head around the idea that America had been involved in a violent conflict in Iraq for most of his life. And it was simply unbelievable for him to think about American soldiers currently being at war in Afghanistan, a place he’s never heard discussed (especially since this had been ongoing since 2001, and he was born in 2005).

Hope admitted that is was frequently pretty tough to talk about such sensitive topics with someone who was totally startled by them; for instance, Gino had argued for a few minutes that it didn’t seem like the country was at war when he could see that no one was fighting. But with her guidance, he’s been learning more every Wednesday night about the realities of the world outside Los Angeles.

Gino’s in-progress journalism piece is short so far, but every word that he’s written was something he learned about hand-in-hand with his tutor (keeping in mind that he’s only 6):

USA Afghan War

The United States is in a war with Afghanistan. The war started in 2001. On September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York City. Al Qaeda planned this attack on America. Osama bin Laden wanted to destroy our country, America. He was the leader of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group. Sadly we killed Osama Bin Laden on May 1, 2011.

For students whose parents might not have the resources or the language to explain to them how a global event came to be, 826LA provides a safe, comforting environment where all viewpoints are respected: the familiarity between our adults and our kids leads to frank discussions on giant issues. As Gino grows up, we think he’s better off for having a place to grow like the Journalism workshop: he knows that we’re here to help him expand his horizons, however limited they may be now. We’re among the most serious journalists around, because we think that kids like Gino need it most.

Our cookies from teachers: rewards for a job well done!

Posted by Robin L. Winston, Teacher

Dear 826LA staff,

A few days after our trip to 826LA, my 4th grade students wrote expository paragraphs about our experience there. These are three of the best, but all reflected enjoyment and relished in detail many aspects of the writing workshop. Thank you for a wonderful day, and we look forward to seeing you next year.

 

I have three favorite activities that we did at 826LA. The first thing that I enjoyed was hearing people giving silly ideas for the story. For example, a fifth grader said the evil doctor’s name should be Dr. Pink. Another one said the main character’s (whose name was Matthew) nose should be super-duper long. Another thing that I liked doing was writing the ending to the story. I wrote that Matthew and Bora Bora yelled for help. Superman came down and saved them. The last activity that we did that I liked was meeting the “Hand of Doom.” The “Hand of Doom” is a gloved hand. It gave us our published stories. Also, I liked the story of how the “Hand of Doom” became the “Hand of Doom.”

- Ally Yamashita

I did three activities on the 826LA field trip. One activity we did was write a story as a group. We wrote a story all together. It was my class and Mrs. McFerren’s class. We wrote a story about a man with a broken nose from Ishkabibble. Then we had to finish the story secretly. I liked doing it this way because it gives us a chance to do individual writing. I’m proud that I filled up the whole page! Lastly, we had lunch. I had a caprese sandwich. During lunch, I was thinking about my story. I loved my story and my lunch!

- Talia Romo-Kikuchi

I was terrified during the trip to 826LA for three reasons. To begin with, I was first startled when Mr. Barnacle woke up and started speaking. When Daniel told my class, Mrs. McFerren’s, and me that Mr. Barnacle was asleep, I thought to myself, “I’ve got to be super silent!” Then we woke up! My heart dropped because Daniel also told us that Mr. Barnacle hated children! Besides that, I thought the Hand of Doom was intensely freaky when Daniel described it. I thought it was going to be a freaky special effect that creeped everyone out. It was just some guy wearing a velvet glove, and it stuck out of the curtain! In my opinion it was pathetic. I also felt frightened at the end of the field trip when Mr. Barnacle called me up to get my book. When he called me, I wasn’t sure what to do because I thought he would deny my book. I thought my ending would sound stupid compared to the others’, but it wasn’t that bad.

- Jamila Piri

 

Edwin of Beethoven Elementary, a tutoring student almost half the years of his life, goes digital on the 826 National Writing Gallery.

Tomorrow, subscribers to 826 National‘s newsletter will find a new, beautiful batch of text in their inbox with all kinds of good news. For one thing, they’ll be directed to an ever-expanding feature part of the site, which “share[s] with you some of the best student writing from workshops, field trips, and tutoring sessions at 826 centers across the country.” This January update is our favorite yet: a chapter spotlight on 826LA!

Jamise Caesar, Vicky Garcia, Edwin Martinez, Jobim Zeichner, Ivan Tovar, and Yuisi Dennis get the web fame they so richly deserve with six brilliant prose works republished in the 826 National Writing Gallery. We highly that recommend readers of this blog (who no doubt have an eye for acclaim-worthy literature) check out the students in the spotlight.

Looking forward to hearing the next scoop on all things writing-related from the folks at National? Make sure to sign up for monthly updates at http://www.826national.org and you’ll get what you’re hoping for. By the way, it would sure be a shame if we missed an opportunity to pass along the links to spotlights on our sibling chapters in Boston (826 Boston), San Francisco (826 Valencia), and Chicago (826CHI). Check them out!

With helpful curation and awesome celebs who will dispense recommendations that surprise you (not to mention the HelloGiggles founding team of writer Molly McAleer, producer Sophia Rossi, and entertainer Zooey Deschanel in a shopping power trio), we can’t think of a better way than Mulu to find perfect gifts.

With Mulu’s personal accounts, we’ve had fun earning points by curating our own shopping lists for e-commerce-lovers. Best of all, when users can identify a charity as they shop, it’s then supported with a percentage of their dollars–and now that Mulu is open to the public, you can make 826LA that lucky charity! You probably caught Mulu on the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D blog, yesterday:

HelloGiggles founders!

“It’s not like an Amazon.com or Best Buy recommendation for a digital camera – it’s a professional photographer’s recommendation for a camera [creator Amaryllis] Fox said. “We’re moving toward a grassroots curation of product discovery online.”

Mulu.me is fun to browse and slightly addictive, regardless of whether the stream is filled with famous people, friends or people you might not even know.

We’re excited to have a couple heavy hitters in our corner of the online shopping mall: Zooey Deschanel, Sophia Rossi, and Molly McAleer of HelloGiggles! At their personal shopping page right here, the HG women right here in Los Angeles have chosen some of their faves for fans, friends, or just-plain-discerning shoppers (and we can’t argue with their taste: check out this great CD that promotes 826 National and this hilarious book by Mindy Kaling).

Please check out the HelloGiggles team’s Picks for 826LA page. For every item you buy, whether it’s a pair of tights or a vegan recipe book for your mom, a percentage of the payment will be donated to the free student writing and publishing services of 826LA. And if you’re feeling creative, start your own Mulu account and encourage your friends to shop your picks and support 826LA!

Shop Zooey, Sophia, and Molly’s picks on mulu.me at this website.

LJ, one of our students, and Kyle, one of our interns, work together on writing skills.

In our Echo Park and Venice writing centers this school year, we’ve had all kinds of fun experimenting with clubs for our after-school sessions: letting the students identify with the hobbies that are most important to them and encouraging them do some stimulating writing activities. Our first intern placed at 826LA by Antioch University, Kyle Mauro, is leading the resurgence of programming with a new sports club in Venice.

We asked some of our speedy homework completers, kids like Alicia, LJ, Marcus, and Magali, to explain to us what made us love sports. We got an earful: our kids love the Lakers (with a couple vocal supporters of the Clippers); participate in basketball, soccer, and swimming in our daily lives; and support teams that call everywhere from Los Angeles to Spain home.

Sports club participants looked up some highlights from the sports world in 2011 and presented them to each other, which made us feel a little like ESPN anchormen and -women. Next Monday, we’re excited to reconvene and hopefully talk about nail-biting moments from the weekend’s games.

Julian, LJ, Daniel, and Jasmin talk sports at 826LA in Venice.

If you’re the kind of person who might want to make one of our after-school tutoring sessions come to life by leading an activity like Kyle’s, consider volunteering your time with “Team 826LA” on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Shaheera from Castle Heights Elementary's 3rd grade transcribed our entire Wikipedia entry by hand before coming to her field trip.

Today’s second field trip of the day was an action-packed Storytelling & Bookmaking adventure for two 3rd grade classes, both composed of the bright and eager authors from Castle Heights Elementary School (in Los Angeles, just a few blocks north of the I-10).

After being introduced to the publishing process by Danny and Jessie, the Castle Heights students watched Chris illustrate a wildly-original tale from their own imaginations and carefully made corrections to find mistakes secretly hidden by Kristi. The student masterpiece, based on story notes by Kyle, required all of their English skill and ingenuity. They wrote in the hopes of pleasing Mrs. Barnacle in her rooftop office, and over four dozen of them were eventually successful.

Aside from the story we created together (The Family of Assassins and the Mystery of Patriot Stadium, a horror story about a gang of psychotic Boston freaks who live in the depths of Gillette Stadium below the New England Patriots), one other story from our Castle Heights visitors particularly delighted us:

A few minutes into the morning’s activity, a first-time writer named Shaheera told the Barnacle & Barnacle employees that she had been so excited about her class visit today that she had woken up at 5 o’clock, gotten on her computer’s web browser before dawn, and went on Wikipedia to look up 826LA. You might say we were kind of a little bit flattered, not to mention impressed. In fact, Shaheera had been so excited about the idea of a center devoted to creative writing that she had memorized a rundown of all of our programs (“in-school support,” etc.) and given herself a primer on 826 National’s history since the days when we were only in San Francisco.

Finally, just to make sure nothing was left unnoticed, Shaheera copied the whole 826LA Wikipedia article down on lined paper, and managed to finish by hand before the sun came up. She brought it to our Venice writing lab!

For a talented writer like Shaheera (who ended The Family of Assassins and the Mystery in Patriot Stadium on a rather ambiguous note, with a young, pigtailed, female assassin disappearing into the shadows and never heard from again), we like to think the project-based model we cherish at 826 provides the perfect path to engage young minds. Our tutors wasted no time proving themselves worthy of their online reputation to the Castle Heights kids this morning, and they’ll dedicate themselves with an equal or greater level of vim to the classrooms who are visiting us throughout the rest of this week (we’re hosting Coeur d’Alene Avenue Elementary, Edison Language Academy, Rosemont Avenue Elementary, the Da Vinci Innovation Academy, and Valley View Elementary for bookmaking, plus an art history exam review session with AP students from Animo Venice – and that’s just this week!).

Anyway, we’ve been having a good chuckle lately at what our students do without Wikipedia. But based on meeting Shaheera today, we’re ready to say that if finding out about us on the world’s biggest free encyclopedia makes a young student like her into an ambassador for our program, Wikipedia’s alright in our book.

Led by after-school tutoring and field trip volunteer Danielle Beinstein, a Santa Monica resident who works to create psychology resources when she’s not here with us, Elizabeth experimented with exquisite corpse, practiced haiku, and took a “sense walk” around the 826LA West lot. We explored a stairwell that was almost a century old, walked around a parking lot to spot weeds and discarded treasures, and finally came into the main gallery area of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) right below our work space.

This photo of a girl in Afghanistan by Lekha Singh moved Elizabeth to write an original poem.

Elizabeth was one of the first young people from the public to look at “Created Equal: Photographs by Lekha Singh,” which began running in SPARC’s gallery in the old Venice jail last week and continues until February 24. Containing what the photographer (a humanitarian relief leader) calls “a collection of photographs from Mexico, Rwanda, Kenya, Indian and Afghanistan – photographs that display haunting beauty and startling familiarity” in their subjects, SPARC’s exhibition was held in part to support the cause of Equality Now, which protects the rights of women and girls around the world. Elizabeth was particularly struck by an 18″ by 24″ photography taken by Singh of a young woman in Afghanistan.

Danielle asked Elizabeth’s class to go back upstairs after touring the gallery and write a poem using their choice of form, topic, and emotional tone. Elizabeth stuck to thinking about the Singh photograph, and came up with a story, told in verse, that we found particularly poignant:

Watching a young student put herself in the shoes of a woman thousands of miles away is a moving experience, and we were were sure that Elizabeth had found something here in the co-mingling of poetry and photography that would stay with her for a long time.

What on Earth would a bunch of adults be able to write?

Some of our volunteers in Venice bemoaned the state of the online world, worried that they wouldn’t have their usual information source handy. Not to let our ambitions get curtailed, we seized the opportunity to try a new challenge. We asked students to turn the tables on the normal routine at 826LA and write prompts for the adults!

Instead of the usual post-homework state of affairs, where our tutors help kids tackle a prompt on the board, students were excited to hypothesize about what a bunch of grown men and women with nothing to write about (idle Wikipedia authors?) should take on. Marcus wrote, “If you could live anywhere in any house, where would it be, what would it look like, and why?” Kimberly came up with this: “Please write a sentence with words that start with the letter K.”

Students tried to come up with prompts for adults.

As the kids learned upon completion of the activity, their prompts for tutors will be collected by some of our AmeriCorps service members and turned into a gift for our volunteers: a book of writing challenges that 826ers can use at home. We’ll be dedicating time to producing that book long after the Internet’s free encyclopedia comes back online, and we concluded by the time tutoring ended at 5:30 that our kids in Echo Park and Venice were as brilliant at helping us as we were at helping them.