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.
