East Los Angeles, where we've just wrapped up writing on a reporting-focused in-school, is the home of James A. Garfield High.

A student named Christina and tutor Kelsey read a piece on LGBT issues.

Just yesterday, 826LA tutors committed to helping students through our in-school projects wrapped up our multiweek initiative at James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. Working with the school’s Humanitas and an array of stellar students (both those reporting to those teachers and others affiliated with the Humanitas Club), 826LA has spearheaded writing work for the publication of a Humanitimes newspaper of school and local interest content.

Much of Humanitimes is based on student commitment and the drive to work on a publication with relevance and substance, so we’ve attracted a diligent cohort of older kids (and even a particularly engaged freshman, Manny). Working with 826LA, they compose and photograph a professional-quality publication. ”Well,” says our partner teacher at Garfield, Raul Espinoza, “I can tell you a little about these kids. When I started out here, they called me in, you know? The principal told me, ‘These kids are a gem.’ I thought of course he would say that, he’s the principal.”

A pair Romel Espinoza's classroom work towards that Pullitzer Prize for Journalism.

But in short order, Romel says, he came to realize that young voices here at Garfield really were special. It’s the reason, one assumes, that he trusts those students completely in the hands of 826LA volunteers who have been partnering with them in February, helping organize journalistic content on everything from the East Los Angeles cityhood drive to the state of the campus. Every student has put time into polishing the writing. The core of reporters for Humanitimes, though making up a relatively tiny share of this large, historic school, has established itself as a sharp-eyed bunch.

But in short order, Romel says, he came to realize that young voices here at Garfield really were special. It’s the reason, one assumes, that he trusts those students completely in the hands of 826LA volunteers who have been partnering with them in February, helping organize journalistic content on everything from the East Los Angeles cityhood drive to the state of the campus. Every student has put time into polishing the writing. The core of reporters for Humanitimes, though making up a relatively tiny share of this large, historic school, has established itself as a sharp-eyed bunch.

Second-year teacher Romel Espinoza, center, readies his class for in-school work on the last 826LA project day.

Garfield’s newspaper will be available in our store.

One side of this 18″x24″ fold-out map is a compendium of literary organizations and bookshops throughout Los Angeles, while the other side serves as a literary landscape of the city as seen through the eyes of Los Angeles-based writers Wanda Coleman, Nina Revoyr, Luis J. Rodriguez, and David Ulin. Each unique voice offers its own perspective on how the city, combined with a love of literature, has shaped them. Proceeds from the sale of the map will benefit 826LA.

Buy your copy at our store or online: echoparktimetravelmart.com

An early construction model: yes, these are the walls we're talking about, in case you were wondering.

“What’s That Sound?” is going to make some lucky school kids into the Holland-Dozier-Holland of their generation, if not the Ashford & Simpson or Leiber & Stoller (need we even evoke The Neptunes?). Like all of our activities, this ovation-worthy series of classes on composition, lyrics, and performance is going to be offered for free, and it has a diverse team of professionals and undiscovered talents from the musical world at its helm (all of them 826LA volunteers).

You can learn more about workshops and their place within the array of our programs by browsing 826LA program activities through this site (click some links up above). Because our fun-focused, project-based model lends itself so well to the abilities of talented tutors whose “day jobs” span the field from dance to design to painting to property law, we’re unveiling great new things all the time.

826LA has been with these students for a hundred days of scholastic work.

While our students come to us from a wide diversity of school environments to be part of 826LA, our bread and butter is the population of the Los Angeles Unified School District. LAUSD is our state’s largest district (one of the largest in the United States, actually), and it presents a world of opportunities to challenge students to write everything from political manifestos to wacky recipes.

Today marks the hundredth day of school for our students on the standard school track, meaning that our brilliant kids are a hundred days closer to the grade they’ll be in next year and, in the cases we love most, a hundred days closer to college someday.

There are big challenges ahead for our teachers: testing schedules, end-of-the-year grading, and looking to the summer and fall ahead. 826LA tutors are proud to support those teachers and their students, and we could always use your help.

We’re currently looking for interns who will support the work of our offices during the spring season, and volunteers are necessary for every 826LA project. If you’d like to know a little bit more about 826LA’s programs, take a look at the basic information on our site.

Tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door. You can purchase tickets here, and for more information For more information, please visit the 7.5 Minutes of Fame Facebook page.

Where & When
WitzEnd
1717 Lincoln Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
Monday, February 27, 7 PM

3rd grade authors came to Venice ready for whatever writing challenge we'd offer, and they got a treat: science fiction!

Leslie’s students at her elementary campus (in Westchester, just north of the airport) had visited 826LA’s doors in Venice last year for a Storytelling & Bookmaking field trip and had a blast. But with their abilities more advanced and their minds curious for something new, Leslie wanted them to have a chance to try something else on their 2012 visit. They’d spent time as a class learning about the solar system: Earth, the planets around our Sun and their moons, even black holes. Leslie thought it would be fun to venture into science fiction writing if the 826LA tutors could handle it. And 826LA volunteer Krisserin Canary, a writer/project manager, was more than up to the task!

Tutors like Jeff chatted with the students throughout their world creation activities.

When they got to 826LA and watched Krisserin’s galactic PowerPoint today, the WISH students learned that Mr. and Mrs. Barnacle were hoping to move Barnacle & Barnacle into a new area: interstellar travel. It was up to the kids to take on this assignment and use their imaginations to come up with cool vacation packages, using the good old science fiction principles of world creation! Students had to learn to distinguish between fantasy and science fiction, of course. Then they worked with tutors Alex, Jacoba, Jeff, Jenna, Kristi, Kyle, Lesley, and Samantha to figure out what types of star, planets, and nearby astronomical phenomena could become space settings for the greatest stories yet told.

Maia came up with a fantasy-sci-fi hybrid region in her solar system called Horrorland, where “all your nightmares come true”; space wasn’t such a fun place in her field trip writing! Student Jack, on the other hand, named a planet after his classmate Adam, and during his presentation to assembled classmates, volunteers, and onlookers he explained that his planet’s technological level meant universal video games!

After brainstorming some gems, we distilled the best into brochures.

These kids may not have thought they were budding Philip K. Dicks and Ursula Le Guins, but we’re pretty sure there’s a Saturn Award waiting to happen at WISH. One of our favorite moments in today’s field trip in Venice was recognizing during a spirited, vibrant discussion that our field trip gave the WISH kids the opportunity to truly show off what they knew (about science) and put it to use in a writing challenge. Thinking of our activities as arenas that teaches young people about writing might sound stodgy initially … but at 826LA it’s amazing to see how, in the spirit of educators like Paulo Freire and the best of our public school system, volunteer tutors challenge students to engage in an environment where both the 3rd grade kids and the professional writers consider themselves simultaneously students and teachers.

WISH students made us laugh today as often as they had us nodding with respect at their creativity. We have so many opportunities to help hardworking elementary, middle, and high school teachers here at 826LA, and it’s always our pleasure to show you moments when that happens in a special way!

Explore new worlds via 826LA.

We've gone from releasing this paperback with Los Angeles School of Global Studies students to helping them analyze social pressure to conform in Nicole Solig's class.

The last few weeks have seen a parade of first days in new programs, each one putting our tutors’ time to a innovative, unique use. At the local Los Angeles School of Global Studies, inside the shiny Miguel Contreras Learning Complex that’s become a hotspot of concentrated tutor efforts this year at 826LA, one of our most thought-provoking projects is taking shape.

For a few more Monday mornings, 826LA is involved in the mostly-completed Bearing Witness project with the sophomore class taught by English and World History teacher Nicole Solig. We have a long history at LASGS: we released the hard-to-find writing collection Walking Through Walls with LASGS kids in 2007 (how could we forget the story of the rake named Country?), and more recently we’ve shown kids the satisfaction derived from working towards a personal dream by helping them with college personal statement essays during their senior year.

This winter gave us a chance to get to know the 10th grade class in a way that we certainly wouldn’t have accepted responsibility for if we didn’t have amazing tutors up to the task; LASGS students go into the Bearing Witness project having already been through the challenging self-confrontation of curriculum from the organization Facing History and Ourselves, which links 20th-century and older lessons to moral challenges of the present time. 826LA volunteers were specifically asked by Nicole to help the students bring out the moral dimensions and emotional content of some in-progress writing, and the experiences those students shared with us are almost automatically powerful.

With several different pieces of writing already completed this year, Nicole’s students got to work with their school administration at the start of the project to choose one piece that they felt to be the strongest candidate for inclusion in an anthology (which will be called Bearing Witness); then they got to work with the 826LA visitors to devise ways to make the narration of what’s often a personal incident clearer and more potently-written. While we’re still waiting to see final results from this project, there’s no reason to question what we expected from the very start: that Nicole’s students will be exiting this part of the year with some amazing writing that no one else could have done in the same voice as theirs.

LASGS teacher Naomi Sugimoto, who will most likely see many of these students right up through the day of their graduation and be in an excellent position to judge their personal growth through the remainder of their teen years, has this insight after working with us as far back as September: “At first, the students were apprehensive about strangers coming in to view their personal stories, but the glowing smiles on the kids’ faces proved their encounters to truly be as supportive and helpful as they needed to be. I’m impressed with how the tutors really tapped into our students’ personal stories and encouraged our kids to open up.”

With a school like LASGS (a place where Naomi says, “826LA has been the support that our students deserve”), 826LA tutors are finding their accumulated wisdom from years of life experience to be a gentle force to fertilize the innate power of local Los Angeles writers who have so much to say. If you read more about our in-school projects, we think you’ll see why we offer Los Angeles a free service that makes lots of sense.

A few weeks ago on a gorgeous Hollywood night, Centaur Club was about the food, the friends, and the fervent love of helping kids write and publish in equal measure.

826LA is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills via the help of a massive group of registered, volunteer tutors who give tirelessly of their time. Whether they’re sitting right in the classroom, running our two centers’ activities, packaging product for the Echo Park Time Travel Mart that supports our work through store sales, plugging away on book design and text editing from home, or just sharing their secrets to bringing out student brilliance with a new volunteer, the 826LA tutors are indispensable. Two weeks ago, we held the January 2012 installment of 826LA’s Centaur Club to recognize attendees from a special invite list: the top hundred members of 826LA’s volunteer community by hours served during the fall of 2011.

At Meltdown, 826LA staffers Birte and Jonah ask Kelley about volunteering since 2008.

Thanks to generous donations from Ca Cao Deli and New Belgium Brewing, we were able to bring the aromas of prize-winning food and flavorful beer into the cozy-yet-beautiful rear space of Meltdown Comics in the middle of Hollywood. To fill up the memorabilia-bedecked back of the building (the same site where we’re the regular beneficiaries of celebrity writer-studded Nerdist Writers discussions), we moved in long dining tables, a hidden stockpile of prizes, and even a mobile station from the awesome folks at LA Photo Party (complete with costumes!). And most importantly, we had our volunteers. From 826LA workshop veterans like Danielle and Megan and to volunteers in the classroom like Debra and Philippe, from field trip whizzes like Eric and Lee-Roy to people who smiling faces light up our after-school tutoring programs like Atiyah and Kristiana, it was a crowd of the most prestigious order. There were talented artists whose work kids see daily at 826LA, like Adam; there were equally praiseworthy patrons of the cause of writing whose work for 826 has been mostly behind-the-scenes, like Stefan. What was the end result? A party for some of the finest, most altruistic folks ever assembled in Los Angeles.

At 826LA we love all our volunteers, and when you love so many wonderful people on a budget it’s no easy feat to thank them all with the effusive affection they deserve. But we were so proud to see this snapshot of our community at Meltdown: each of our 826LA Centaur Club attendees contributed in a major way to our efforts toward impacting more than 7000 students in a school, a center, or a museum during the year, leaving each so many kids more confident in their voices as writers.

The "Mexicatessen" team from Ca Cao gave our volunteers a wealth of quesadilla deliciousness, taco treats, and more.

We owe a special thanks to our food and beverage sponsors, the LA Photo Party team, and the unbeatable folks at Meltdown, without whose help the January 2012 Centaur Club would simply not have been as amazing as it was. From the side-splitting “live” Q&A with 826LA’s own Mr. and Mrs. Barnacle to a video of a few of our students saying thanks, the night couldn’t have left us feeling better.

To learn a bit more about the outstanding people who breathe life into 826LA’s activities and operations with their volunteer efforts, we encourage you to check out our recent Volunteers of the Month!

Fashion Club co-leader Jessie guides kids Maria, Sky, and Jose on quests to find who wore it best.

Jose shows us the cover of his Fashion Club magazine: "Beyoncé's Wig Exclusive Interview"!

Recently, our blog reports from the front lines of after-school tutoring have talked about the formation of a new Venice “Sports Club” that led spirited discussions of new developments in the sports world while encouraging students to try a bit of athletics-related writing every Monday. Still going strong: the fall’s “Fashion Club” for catty, cultured, current, or just plain cool kids in the Venice program, who met on Thursday to work on a story about the day in the life on their favorite celebrity accessory.

When they’re working with our Fashion Club tutors, children have the privilege of drawing inspiration from some of the most stylish Angelenos around. Today club instructor and 826LA intern Jessie Lieberson (who works up the street at the Gotta Have It vintage store) helped them with a collage-style magazine cover for their mind-blowing, student-written tell-all exposé of what it’s really like to be a fashion prop to a star.

We have plenty of fun in AST, between all our clubs and the general awesomeness of students getting better grades as they produce potent writing. But we couldn’t do it without some smart, innovative tutors. If you’re interested in what happens at 826LA, you should think about volunteering.

Great Couple

When I look at you

Michael reads poetry for adoring fans at in the Beyond Baroque Literacy Arts performance space, 2011.

You remind me of

Roses, and I might have

A crush on you,

But you will always

Be my friend. When I

See your face there’s

Nothing that could be

Changed. People say

We could be a

Great Couple.

Students celebrated Valentine’s Day today with Oreos, wrapped candy, and outpourings of thanks for their tutors. All in a day’s work!