We believe there’s no better way to end a school year than to publish some student writing. For the last four weeks, 826DC volunteers have worked with Ms. Lerenman’s seventh graders at KIPP Key Academy to write and produce chapbooks that feature an array of short poems that include sobering insights about the current economy as well as odes to Pizza Hut. From the Declaration of Independence-style poems to pantoums, 826DC volunteer Eleanor Graves presented students with a new form each week in which to express themselves through writing. They began each session with freewriting on topics ranging from their favorite foods to politics to what goes on in the hallways of their school.
“We wanted to introduce the kids to some new ways of creating poetry that would also be fun for them,” says Eleanor, an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in journals like Phoebe, Practice, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. “We discovered that writing can be both formal and free, serious and silly, all in one poem.”
Our thanks to KIPP’s seventh grade teacher Flora Lerenman, as well as the 826DC volunteers who helped students brainstorm through bouts of writer’s block. Check out some of the students’ work here.