MightyWriters

Click here for donation options!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In just over three months, Mastery Charter Schools, the local nonprofit that has received national recognition for success in turning around formerly troubled middle schools, has doubled its schools to six.

Mastery’s goal is to prepare students for college with a strict behavior code, a longer school day and a longer school year. Tutoring and Saturday sessions are required for those who struggle and students must show “mastery” by earning a grade of at least 76 percent before advancing.

Mastery is one of four charter operators converting seven low-performing district schools into Renaissance schools this school season as part of Superintendent Arlene Ackerman’s Imagine 2014 initiative. This year promises to be Mastery’s biggest test yet.

Philadelphia Inquirer

photo: Charles Fox/Inquirer

Comic Madness
Ages 9-12
Tuesdays, 6-7:30pm: Oct. 5, 12, 19, 26 and Nov. 9, 16,
Learn techniques for crafting a narrative—pacing, story-boarding, page layout and cover art. By the end of these six sessions, you’ll have produced your very own comic book individually (or collectively in a small group). Come join the ranks of our Mighty Comic Artists.

•

Girl Power Poetry
Ages 13-15
Sundays, 6-8pm, Oct. 17, 24, 31 and Nov. 7, 14, 21
Jaime Hunter and Sheena Strawter-Anthony introduce young teenage girls to a variety of female African-American and Latina modern poets. Discussions on gender equality, motherhood and urban life will be explored. This workshop seeks to inspire literacy—reading, writing, listening, speaking, an appreciation and understanding of poetry and a sense of self-accomplishment.

•

Hot News Now
Ages 13-15
Mondays, 6-8pm: Oct. 18, 25 and Nov. 1, 8, 15 and 22
Get bylines in local publications while working with top-notch journalist and Temple prof George Miller, returning for his second Mighty Writers workshop. We’ll talk about the kind of news that matters to us and then make sure that people in Philadelphia get to read it.

•

Sportswriting Is Back!
Ages 15-17
Tuesdays, 6-8pm: Oct. 5, 12, 19, 26 and Nov. 9, 16
With Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Annette John-Hall, we’ll discuss the hottest topics in sports and learn what makes a sports story POP! Learn trade secrets about how to get pro athletes to open up in an interview and to write a sports story with flair and style.

To sign up for any workshop, call or email
Program Director Rachel Loeper:
267.239.0899
rloeper@mightywriters.org

P.S. More to come!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today, in the New York Times, book critic Janet Maslin calls Isabel Wlkerson’s new nonfiction book—“The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”—”a landmark piece of nonfiction.”

That kind of praise is hard to come by in the NYT.

The New Yorker weighed in, too, suggesting the author became “something of a one-woman W.P.A. project” while researching her book.

Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Chicago bureau chief for The New York Times, documents the 55-year-long migration of black Americans across the United States.

Writes NYT critic Maslin (bold is MW’s): “Ms. Wilkerson makes a case that people who left the South only to create hometown-based communities in new places are more like refugees than migrants: more closely tied to their old friends and families, more apt to form tight expatriate groups, more enduringly attached to the areas they left behind. She argues that these people, among them her Georgia-born mother and Virginia-born father who raised Ms. Wilkerson in Washington, D.C., were better educated and more closely tied to their families than other scholars have assumed. She works on a grand, panoramic scale but also on a very intimate one, since this work of living history boils down to the tenderly told stories of three rural Southerners who immigrated to big cities from their hometowns.”

New York Times
New Yorker

photo (top)/Farm Bureau Administration

As we’ve reported in this space before, we are currently—like right this very minute!—taking over the second-floor at Mighty Writers, which means we’re doubling our space, doubling the number of Mighty kids we’ll be working with, doubling the number of tutors—and, best part of all, doubling our general Mightiness!

We’ve painted, brought in new furniture, hung art, bought lots of writing supplies… and, uh, now we’re just realizing that we sure could use a few more computers: three, in fact, would be really, really fab.

We’re looking for less than three-year-old iMacs, MacBooks or Powerbooks.

So… if you happen to know someone who might want to donate a Mac (hey, we’re writers!) to a program that will put it to super-duper use, just give us a call at 267.239.0899 and we promise to be your bff!

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is offering a series of workshops on the coverage of urban education as part of its initiative to prioritize urban education reporting.

The free program will open with a major workshop, from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, at the Journalism School in New York as part of the New York Times Institute project being co-sponsored by the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Spencer Foundation for Education Research.

Applications are due Sept. 3.

New York Times/Columbia University

Emmy Winners for Writing, Drama Series:
Matthew Weiner and Erin Levy, “Mad Men.”

Emmy Winners for Writing, Comedy Series:
Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd, “Modern Family.”