Trying to keep up with things during this time of year is tough: Kids returning from summer vacations, schools starting up their sites with us, our Master's classes getting underway and resumption of our newspaper series. A lot to do, and too little time to do it all.
And then there's this: The breath of fresh air. For the second year, a group of YWP writers are participating in the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, writing about music, because of music, on music, under music. They are going to rehearsals and talks and musical composition workshops and performances. They are talking to musicians and concert goers and peers.
And they are writing. And recording. And taking pictures. Please sample their work on youngwritersproject.org
The other day we got a phone call that reminded us of why we do what we do.
The woman was calling about her son who, she said, loved to write in 5th grade but now that he's in 7th hates it. It's the teacher, she said.
Well maybe it is the teacher -- to an extent; as the conversation progressed she revealed that what happened in her son's 7th grade English class was that the focus has changed: the emphasis is no longer on stories and ideas and imagination and images but on structure and grammar and punctuation and formats. Writing has become assignments and homework.
The fun of writing has gone, she said.
We see this alot. Elementary school creative exploration gives way to form and process; learning the "fundamentals," though, seems to deaden kids' interest and excitement. Writing becomes a chore.
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Note: This was written shortly after I heard Dr. Michael Wesch, anthropology professor and digital learning giant, speak at the BLC10 November 10 conference in Boston. I was a presenter and also led two workshops. This wasl also posted on http://novemberlearning.com/blog/ and http://digitalteachers.net .,YWP's teacher site.
At various times in Michael Wesch's presentation on Thursday, I felt alternately inspired, wowed, encouraged, thrilled and out-of-date, inadequate, woefully behind and, frankly, not as smart as I thought I was. Way not smart. I found myself wanting to create a video that would go viral, to redoing all our software so it could be half as cool or to help students create a project that would change the world.
There are a lot of reasons we have not been able to get to this blog over the last year:
Very busy. As you'll see from the numbers below, it's been a busy and productive year.
Technology. This site was housed on another server and we just could never find the time to move it to the new server, which may be another way of saying we didn't have time.
Well, we're back.
And this is the beginning of what we plan to have as regular posts to give you more detail than a Facebook or Twitter post or link, to give you some information behind what's going on at Young Writers Project.
So a whirlwind update on the year gone by using numbers, and a few words:
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The eighth graders at Benson Village School perofrmed their ballad on Wednesday before a packed gym. Below is an earlier slideshow of the ballad with Pete Sutherland on voice. This was the second of our YWP Ballad Writing Residency which was underwritten by the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
The Benson performance made the Front Page of the Rutland Herald on Thursday, click here for the link.
And later on Thursday, Pete performed parts of both ballads on Vermont Public Radio's Vermont Edition. Podcast above.
Young Writers Project held a live and digital Poetry Slam at the Champlain Mill and streamed it live on youngwritersproject.org. Click here to see the recorded version.
Running the slam was Geof Hewitt, poetry slam artist and a curriculum/writing coordinator for Vermont DOE. He said at the end of the session to the gathering and later reiterated it to me privately that the quality of the poetry was higher than any slam he has ever given -- adult or otherwise. "Your biggest problem is that for those out there watching, this may have been intimidating."
Pete Sutherland and his gang of 4th, 5th and 6th graders at Swanton School presented the results of their 4-week Ballad Writing residency at the Tabor House on May 4. Many parents, kids, grandparents, community members wedged into the main room at the resort which was opened up for the occasion. Here is a slideshow and recording of the performance; the art work was done by each of the students using glass prints. Thanks to our sponsors, the Lake Champlain Basin Program Thanks to Swanton School Principal Julie Benay for spearheading this project. The song has been performed and will be performed by Pete Sutherland in many public venues this spring, summer and fall. The next show: May 16 at Burlington's Waterfront as part of the Young Traditions weekend. Click headline to read the words as you listen.
Benson Village School, meanwhile, soon will complete its ballad as part of this project and will be presenting their ballad at school on May 27.
It is Monday, the start of a new week, the day when students at Essex High School returned from vacation, the first day back since a freshman, Aaron Xue, committed suicide behind the school.
Aaron Xue was 15 years old and by all accounts smart, talented and athletic. He was an honors student. He was one of the best tennis players in the state and was nationally ranked. He was a cellist. And, from the remembrances of his family, his friends, his teachers and even those who knew him only slightly, he was a gentle, compassionate soul. He died late Friday, April 17.
Young Writers Project learned of Aaron's death from a friend of his who posted something Sunday afternoon. We contacted EHS and received advice and counsel from the guidance director -- Michelle Rath -- as to how best to handle the situation. We posted a note asking that the students write about Aaron's life and about their own feelings rather than conjecture about his death.
We are starting up an exciting new program: The YWP Digital Writing Center at Champlain Mill (our new home). This space will serve small groups of students -- particularly "at risk" immigrant and low-income students in the surrounding area -- as well as college mentors, teachers and the community. This center will allow us to hold many small workshops, training and events that promote writing, expression and creative use of multimedia.
Our aim is to have a place that becomes an active, vibrant meeting place in which we bring in experts in all sorts of things -- digital storytelling, photography, videography, journalism, social action, visual art, visual design and, of course, wrting. Writing, writing, writing. We'd like to connect experienced young writers with peers who are less experienced or who recently moved here from foreign lands. We'd like to connect our online college mentors with students face-to-face and also help them hone their critical skills. We'd like to connect young writers with elders in the community. We'd like to bring in storytellers to give young writers some ideas.
For the first phase of this project -- to get it off the ground -- we have set a modest goal of $12,000 for computers, furniture and a bit of remodeling and to cover some of the professional fees for planned workshops so that we can offer scholarships to those students of need. We strongly believe that our services aimed at helping student improve their writing skills should be available to all.
If you would like to donate, if you want to know more about our program, or if you would consider giving us a large sponsorship, please contact us at this address:
Geoffrey Gevalt Young Writers Project Champlain Mill 20 Winooski Falls Way, Suite #4 Winooski, VT 05404 802-310-0642 ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org
We promise you that students, mentors, teachers and friends will not be disappointed with what we can offer and what kids produce because of your generosity. And stay tuned as details of our work get posted here. (Nice passive sentence, I agree.) Thanks so much. Geoff
This is a final draft of a Soundslides presentation I made up last night on the topic of student voice and creating authentic audience for kid's work. We are appreciative that Soundslides has donated 10 licenses for the project, and I thought it a good opportunity to learn the software. This is the leading edge software for digital storytelling and we plan to use this in some summer workshops we are doing. Thought you'd like to see it. PLEASE comment below so I can revise it before I present it to teachers in public.
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A few random items of interest over the last few days at Young Writers Project, Inc.
First, feast your eyes on this recent submission by a student on youngwritersproject.org. This was done through vuvox.com which is an amazing site that allows users to create collages and multi-media visual stories. Great fun. Student's name is Bridget Iverson; she's at Mount Mansfield Union High School. Since this column is a bit narrow, this is best seen by clicking on the box next to the "SHARE" in the bottom right to view it on full screen.
Friday was a good day for YWP. Bullet highlights (more later):
FairPoint Communications announced a major grant to support Online Writing Centers at four schools, to help fund an efficacy study by a local college or university and to fund special publication of student work. Thanks to them.
In this month's Hinesburg Record is a wonderful story by several kids at the Hinesburg Community School about their experience with the online writing classroom we built for them. We have one team and about 55 kids testing it out and plan to expand it to much of the school next year.
The article was written by Autumn Eastman and Mackenzie Tobrocke -- two seventh graders. Let me unashamedly quote some of their writing:
"The opportunity which the Young Writers Project has provided to HCS students has changed the way we use our writing skills and abilities. ... The website allows students and teachers to free write and express their opinions. ... Students on the Infinity Team are also allowed to comment and give each other what's called "1+1" comments -- you give the author one piece of postiive feedback and then give them one thing they could improve on."
We had so much fun with the first Vermont Writes Day, we decided to do a second and a third. We held the second one on March 17. (Go to vermontwrites.ywpvt.net to see a sampling of student work from the day.) The third is planned for May 5 and will focus on farming and will include this prompt:
After two and a half years under the generous, supportive wing of the Vermont Business Roundtable, YWP has moved to new digs at the Champlain Mill in Winooski. This is very exciting for us -- to have space and to consider the possibilities of what we could do with workshops, events and training were we able to raise some money and volunteers.
The first day was interesting -- with not enough chairs and email that wasn't working quite right -- but we got a fair amount done despite the change. We, by the way, is now me, Eva DeVries and Lee McIsaac.
To see more of the before and after shots of our space -- the former Winooski Teen Center -- check out these galleries!
The other night, after five hours of painting at our new offices at Champlain Mill, I headed to my car and saw a young man waiting for a bus. It was cold and, given the hour, I figured it would be a while before the bus arrived. John Canning, our board chair was with me, we said our goodbyes and then I walked over to the young man.
"Where you headed?"
"Downtown, Burlington."
"Want a ride?"
Turns out the young man was returning from his job at a Thai restaurant and was a senior at Champlain College in its Professional Writing Program. Turns out he's quite a poet -- was named the college's student poet and edits the school's wonderful anthology "Willard and Maple." I've asked him to mentor and he's interested in interning.... All from an offer of a ride. Here, by the way, is part of a note he sent me:
We just received a wonderful note from Amie Desautels who is using our Online Writing Classroom at Lamoille Union Middle School. Amie signed up for our Digital Learning class that is being accredited through St. Michael's College. This is a practicum -- We build a site for the teachers, provide basic training and then have the teachers, during the year, make use of the site with blogging, commenting, podcasting and digital storytelling. We provide support online, through email and through occasional visits to the classroom.
Amie's experience was so exciting to her colleagues at the school, we've brought them into the site as well and they are now all getting up to speed.
Amie sent us a letter of feedback. Here's a small excerpt of what she said:
I never have liked Monday mornings that much. I'm not alone, I know. I guess by most Sundays I am realizing that there is another side of me than work and am starting to "chill out" as my kids say (though they might dispute that.) Monday mornings I'm usually foggy -- I've caught up on sleep -- and a bit stressed as I think about all the things I need to get done in the week ahead.
So, it's really really really nice when we get an email like this from a user of our main student site, youngwritersproject.org:
"Hi Mr. Gevalt!
"I don't know if this is going to be considered wierd and stalker-like, but I wanted to tell you something. My name is (name removed because she didn't know I was going publish this) and I'm sunshinedaisy on youngwritersproject.org.
In the spring of 2007, concerned that the volume of submissions to our Newspaper Series was so large that we were disappointing far more students than we were encouraging, we teamed up with University of Vermont Writing Center Director Sue Dinitz to see if we could get some of her top, trained tutors to provide feedback to the young writers. She jumped at the chance and each semester we've had at least a handful of student mentors from UVM providing feedback. We've also had students from St. Michael's College and Middlebury.
This fall, we involved students from Castleton College. They've been great. Castleton, interestingly, is one of the few colleges in the nation that requires all students to pass a rigorous writing test in order to graduate. Last semester and this we have about 40 to 45 students participating. Andrew Alexander, a professor at Castleton, is leading the group this spring and sees the program expanding to many more students at Castleton.
We were up at Lamoille Middle School this week where one teacher, Amie Desautels, has gotten several colleagues to joint the site we built for her class. One of the teachers, Nicole Burke, got her kids onto the site right away.
She said that one of her students has terrible penmanship and had always struggled with writing. The first day the student was on the site, she wrote and wrote and wrote. "She told me she'd never written so much," Burke said.
In 2007 we began to build Web sites for after-school groups and teachers. The aim was to get students to write to each other, to expand beyond an audience of one -- the teacher. Many studies show that this type of peer-to-peer learning is very powerful.
And indeed that has proven the case. We have 18 sites up and running right now and have done another five pilots. We survey the kids at the beginning and end of the year to gauge changes in their attitudes about writing and themselves. We also have discovered from these surveys that a side benefit is that the students gain a deeper appreciation of each other because of these online classrooms.
We also ask teachers to suggest improvements and give feedback. Our argument is that not only is this helpful to us but it can also help in discussion at the school about whether to go more deeply into digital learning or to buy more computers.
Here's a piece of feedback we received today from a 7/8 grade teacher using one of our online classrooms:
In August 2006, I left my job as managing editor of The Burlington Free Press to embark full-time on this crazy notion that someone from the outside world could engage a few kids to write.
The first thing I did (after, of course, the required one day off) was to start building a Web site. It took me two weeks. But it worked. And, starting with one member of youngwritersproject.org -- me -- we've now grown to 3,560 members -- mostly students -- and we've chunked about 1,000 students along the way who've graduated....
What I have discovered about this site that is most amazing is how much the students talk about the site being addictive and monstrously time consuming. Now I know they speak the truth because I look at my Google Stats from time to time and see -- Average daily visits; 450 to 800; average pages visited: 10+; average time of visit: 11 minutes. Now if you know anything about Web site metrics that's pretty darn good. And if you take out the 32 percent who bop onto the site and leave immediately (now that's attention deficit!) the actual average is much much higher (hasn't Google heard of mean?)
The Burlington Free Press did a Q&A with one of the winners of our Future of Vermont essay contest. FP reporter Lynn Monty spoke with Jessica Austin of Westford. Here's a link to the story. And to read her essay, click here.
Among her comments:
Was the essay you wrote a required assignment?
No, it was not required. I go on the Young Writer Project Web site twice a day, and I saw the prompt, so I wrote the essay.
Why?
I really love to write a lot. It’s my form of expression. I’m kind of a quiet person, and it’s the one way I can express myself without feeling self-conscious.
What would you say to other kids who want to enter writing contests?
Find your best work and improve it and submit it. Don’t let rejection get you down. Just keep on going and write something new. ...
Here are the other winners of the Future of Vermont Essay Challenge (we received about 350 entries):
As a journalist, I was always trained to assume nothing, to continually reassess; to figure out how to get over, around, under hurdles and obstacles and to get it done -- there's a paper to get out.
This puts me in good stead to run a nonprofit in this economic climate.
So we are experiencing donors who have less to give, foundations who have more applicants for less money and corporate sponsors who are getting hit from all sides.
Today we had a meeting with one company that is deeply interested in partnering with us. It has already made some commitments and is now assessing at what level they will support us in the coming fall. We've been talking since June and we have determined our goals are the same -- to help community; our missions are similar -- using digital technology to improve learning; and we like each other.
Geoffrey Gevalt founded and directs the Young Writers Project, a VT nonprofit working to build a generation of better writers. Lee McIsaac directs YWP's mentoring and publication programs.Kate Falloneis a longtime UVM mentor and YWP instructor. This blog highlights cool things students and teachers are doing, talks about activities at YWP and shows some of the impact of this project. PLEASE COMMENT; otherwise we will think no one is reading. Thanks.
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To subscribe to an RSS feed of this blog, go to:http://ywpblog.ywpvt.net/rss.xml or paste that url in your RSS feed aggregator or Web site. -- gg
Friday was a good day for YWP. Bullet highlights (more later):
After two and a half years under the generous, supportive wing of the Vermont Business Roundtable, YWP has moved to new digs at the Champlain Mill in Winooski. This is very exciting for us -- to have space and to consider the possibilities of what we could do with workshops, events and training were we able to raise some money and volunteers.
The first day was interesting -- with not enough chairs and email that wasn't working quite right -- but we got a fair amount done despite the change. We, by the way, is now me, Eva DeVries and Lee McIsaac.
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