Mighty Writers Find Their Voice

July 31, 2009

By Annette John-Hall

Mighty Writers.

Big, strong name, isn’t it? Conjures up images of determined scribes, heads down, committing powerful thoughts to paper.

Meaningful words, with enough strength to empower the world.

Tim Whitaker nods. Yes! That was exactly the image he was going for when he founded Mighty Writers, his month-old writing program for kids. Because, let’s face it, when it comes to our kids, writing – real writing – is becoming a lost art, replaced by a 140-character tweet or abbreviated texts that hijack the English language.

Real writing is about construction and grammar, voice, and detail. It’s about empowering kids to “express themselves and have a sense of respect for their imaginations,” Whitaker says.

And that’s what Mighty Writers does. Through topical workshops run by a cadre of energetic volunteers, fledging writers ages 7 to 18 discover the power of words, and how to use them the right way.

With 22 percent of Philadelphia’s adults at the lowest literacy level (the national rate is 14.5 percent) and a dismal high school dropout rate hovering around 50 percent, Mighty Writers serves a dual purpose as writing program and crisis-management tool.

“The public schools are failing kids at every level, and writing is one of them,” Whitaker says. “The kids who come into this program love to write, so we want to stir that creativity.”

Whitaker, 61, comes by teaching naturally. He taught middle school for a couple of years in his 20s, but realized he wasn’t mature enough to handle the students.

So he went into magazine editing and for 15 years served as editor of Philadelphia Weekly.

But he always had the idea for a nonprofit writing program sprouting in the back of his mind. One modeled after 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing and tutoring center founded by author Dave Eggers.

So after Whitaker left his job at the Weekly, he secured $250,000 in seed money from the Lenfest Foundation and accepted music mogul Kenny Gamble’s offer of the old Obama headquarters at 15th and Christian, rent-free for a year.

He had the idea, the money, and the building. All he needed were volunteers.

How’s this for serendipity? About the same time, Rachel Loeper, 27, quit her job creating software for remedial readers and was looking to start a writing program. She, too, had stumbled across a podcast of Eggers talking about how 826 Valencia was “bringing kids meaning as writers,” and was inspired.

“So Tim and I sat down and talked,” says Loeper, Mighty Writers’ program director. “He had the funding, and I had the volunteer pool.”

Many of the 75 volunteers who conduct the 12 workshops a week are part of the Teach for America program. Mighty Writers “has almost become an incubation space for their careers,” Loeper says.

For the most part, the workshop leaders are young and energetic. But it doesn’t matter how much juice you have if you can’t inspire kids to put pen to paper.

That’s why topics have to engage, like the “Michael Jackson and Dance” seminar that Whitaker and Loeper taught together last week.

The kids wrote about Jackson’s connection to the dance moves of Tony-winning tap sensation Gregory Hines and James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. The best of the essays will be published at the end of the session.

“We’re not here to turn the kids into professional writers,” Whitaker says. Instead, Mighty Writers introduces different writing forms – journalism, narrative, poetry, even songwriting – as a way of self-expression.

Which is a good thing for Ayanna Dickerson, 15, an aspiring lyricist.

“I love the whole process,” says Dickerson, who has already written a riveting kind of “hip-hopera” about a cheating boyfriend, You Don’t Know, which she hopes to record. “I enjoy making up characters and writing dialogue. . . . I like to leave people guessing.”

Chance McCall’s favorite workshop is neighborhood nonfiction, in which he can fan out into the community and gather real-life stories.

“I want to be a professional basketball player. But even if I make it” in the NBA, the strapping 13-year-old says, “I also want to write books.”

That’s a mighty way to think.