TWO EXCITING PROJECTS FROM W*ORT IN AUSTRIA

MONDOPOLY

Together with the youth department of the local council and the youth organization we organized “Mondopoly”—an intergenerational game. The main purpose of the game is to work against stereotypes by bringing together people who wouldn’t ordinarily meet. The local town becomes the “board” of this “board game.” One hundred pupils went out in groups of 4, armed with paper maps and an address (without a name), knocked on doors and rang door bells. They met 25 different people from the area and found out that our local mayor isn’t just a politician, but also a dog lover, a philosopher, a sports man, and a lover of everything English. The game happened on one day only and was documented by a group of teenagers. To fully capture what the kids learned on the day, we’ll organize a writing workshop with a published author in a couple of weeks’ time. From the workshops, we’ll release a publication at the end of November.

More info and photos from this project: http://mondopoly-lustenau.at

CROSSING BORDERS

Our local town is based on the Swiss border, but the Rhine forms a very strong border between Austria and Switzerland. There’s a town just under 30km upstream that borders Lichtenstein in the same manner. W*ORT teamed up with a theater in this town, and a regional organization for literature and has organized a cross-border project involving four schools: 2 Austrian, 1 Swiss and 1 Lichtenstein. The aim is to compare family stories across the border and to write them down. Two authors will accompany the project and guide the pupils through the writing project, which will culminate in a publication.

This project will start at the end of November, check W*ORT’s website for updates here.

Judica’elle Irakoze, one of our brilliant delegates to the International Congress of Youth Voices, has a powerful piece in the Portland Press Herald this week. As a Maine resident, she has some choice words for Susan Collins in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings. -D.E.

SCREENWRITING WORKSHOP | AUSTIN BAT CAVE

On October 26th, our friends at the Austin Bat Cave (ABC) welcomed more than 100 Austin and Houston students from three schools for an intensive workshop on screenwriting! Students worked on their own short scenes which they were then invited to submit for publication in ABC’s annual anthology of student writing. The host for the day was the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex in East Austin.

If You Can See the Stars There Is Still Light | Young Authors Greenhouse

Young Authors Greenhouse, a writing center for kids in Louisville, just published their first book, titled If You Can See the Stars There Is Still Light. Great title, no? There’s nothing like it in the world — nothing like this book, and nothing like the feeling, when you’re in middle school, of being published for the first time. Congratulations to the students at Olmsted Academy South, their teachers, and the staff at YAG. This is one of the partnerships you dream of — a fantastic public school, a bold and welcoming principal (Angela Allen), and a bunch of volunteers who made it all possible. -D.E.

Delegate Destiné Price Takes on Michigan School Curriculum Changes

Destiné Price was one of the delegates to our inaugural International Congress of Youth Voices, and is now taking on some very disturbing curriculum changes in the Michigan public schools. Republican State Senator and Gubernatorial candidate Patrick Colbeck is proposing the removal of references to: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); the LGBTQ community; Roe v. Wade; climate change; and specific references to individual minority groups (immigrants, people with disabilities, etc). Orwellian doesn’t begin to describe it. Stalinesque? “I think it basically takes the voices away from all the identities they’re erasing away,” Price said. “I think that it’s going to be really hazardous for our communities of color to be unable to connect to their histories…because we don’t even learn about some of these things until we can access higher education, and them putting us all in a position where we have to kind of teach ourselves is not equity access.” -D.E.

Esperanza Rivera of 826 CHI Introduces President Barack Obama

This is Esperanza Rivera introducing President Barack Obama at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago. Esperanza, a longtime student at 826CHI, was the first delegate named to the International Congress of Youth Voices, and her poise and authenticity in introducing the President were pretty astounding — especially considering Esperanza is only 15. The President and I had to ask each other, What were we doing at 15? The answer was Nothing remotely close to that. Thank you Esperanza and congratulations. More about the Obama Foundation to come. -D.E.

International Congress of Youth Voices Students Meet Chelsea Clinton

Last week, students from the International Congress of Youth Voices got to meet, and ask questions of, Chelsea Clinton, who was swinging through the Bay Area supporting Start Now! a new book she’s written about youth activism. The event, in the San Ramon High School gym — go Wolves — was weirdly therapeutic. Chelsea is just solid, and the Congress delegates — Kenan, Aniya, and Jeronimo — were on point. The event was moderated by the handsome and purpley Glynn Washington. -D.E.

Max Costume Update

It’s been impossible to choose between all the equally worthy entrants into this weird Wild Things costume contest, so we will be doing something appropriately weird and completely impractical. The Wild Things costume will spend this schoolyear bouncing around from one classroom to another, so everyone who entered will get to enjoy it for a week. (Doing calendar-math on napkin, finding it within the realm of possible.) Still, this is of course an insane plan, but if I know elementary schoolteachers, they can pull this off without breaking a sweat. So the first school — Lee Hunter Elementary in Sikeston, Missouri — will get it next week. When you get it, my Lee Hunter friends, take some photos and post them, and we’ll link to each other — I have no idea how this works — and then you’ll send it to the next school. (Don’t worry — we’ll tell you where.) In this way, we’ll have a sort of year-long chain-letter, albeit one containing dirty white fur and broken whiskers. This will be fun. Thank you to everyone who entered. We’ll do it next year, providing the costume is intact and Instagram still exists. -D.E.

826 Valencia Mission Bay

826 Valencia is opening a new center in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco. The building, just being finished now, will house dozens of families that had previously been homeless. The developers, in partnership with the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, have given 826 Valencia a first-floor space, so the families will live above, making it easy for parents and guardians to send their kids to 826 below. This has always been our goal — to make after-school enrichment as easy to access as possible. And when that after-school space is an enchanted forest populated by gnomes and elves — this is key. Check out some conceptual renderings of the new space. Art by Jaqueline Brown.  - D.E.

Max Costume from Where the Wild Things Are

I have one of the original Max furry costumes used in Where the Wild Things Are, and periodically I’ve loaned it out to kids and classrooms for Halloween. This year I’m opening it up to any fourth-grade classroom in the U.S. Comment below, and my colleague Amanda Uhle will randomly pick a winner on Oct 17. We’ll send you the costume, on loan till after Halloween. We ask that you return it with at least two student-written haikus about feral-ness and/or hot soup. Note that it is already intentionally dirty. When you receive a filthy, itchy costume with bent whiskers and missing feet, it is all as intended.
-D.E.

How To Make a Place Like 826 | Youth Authors Greenhouse

Today, the people that started Louisville’s Young Authors Greenhouse began writing about the genesis of this organization. Look for it on McSweeneys.net. Maybe it illuminates how easy — well, maybe not easy, but within reach — this kind of project is. It’s a matter of will, and an optimism that obliterates all fear.
-D.E.

Now they’re opening their own brick-and-mortar writing lab in Louisville's Portland neighborhood. It’ll even have a storefront with a half-airship, half-underwater exploration theme. Long story involving quarreling twins who couldn’t decide on a theme. Here’s the blueprint. -D.E.

Young Authors Greenhouse | Louisville, Kentucky

A week or so ago I was in Louisville and got to see some truly astonishing 7th graders perform songs with Jim James, Teddy Abrams, 1200, Tyrone Cotton, Rachel Grimes and other professional musicians. The kids wrote the songs, the musicians set them to music. This all happened on a Friday morning, and there were standing ovations for every tune. Here's 1200 with a few of the students. -D.E.

This is all the work of the Young Authors Greenhouse, a new youth writing center based on the 826 Valencia model. For a year they’ve been doing great work in a school called Frederick Law Olmsted Academy South — an all-girls public middle school run by a visionary principal, Angela Allen. -D.E.

Here, Tyrone Cotton and Jim James work with students at Frederick Law Olmsted Academy South school. The students wrote lyrics, and then musicians like Jim and Tyrone set them to music. The results were extraordinary. Keep your ears peeled for Jim’s imminent release of the song he worked on with the students. And someday the story of the pink dinosaur-piano will be told. -D.E.

Here’s a picture of Adrena, Mohogne and Skylar, three Louisville students who call their group Breaking Chains. They wrote a very moving song called “Is It Friendship?” based on an experience one of the three songwriters had. Check out these lyrics. There were three groups that wrote and performed that morning, and every song was heavy. No jaunty tunes about four-square. These are serious young people. -D.E.

You forgot about me
Kicked me to the curb
Our friendship was a lesson 
A lesson to be learned
I tried to stay and make it work
But we never could go back 
to where we were

Isn’t friendship being there for each other?
Isn’t friendship being real to each other?
Isn’t friendship forgiving each other?
Is it friendship? Is it friendship?