Chapter 1 arrived in your email inboxes yesterday. Please make sure you read it, as Program Manager Denise R. Ervin shares some truly incredible insights.

826michigan utilizes community volunteers to provide students with one-on-one attention and small group work in every program offered. With the help of caring adults, students not only gain experience and confidence in writing, which contributes to academic success, but also find a community of like-minded peers and experience mentorship and social and emotional support that will feed them for a lifetime. 

We get to experience the magic of working with 826michigan students every day, so we thought we'd give you three installments of glimpses behind the curtain this week. If you still need convincing to give to 826michigan after you hear our testimonials firsthand, come and check out a program in person. We’d love to have you!

Your friends,

Denise, Megan G., and Eli

If you need no convincing, please click the button to the right and be spirited away to our quick-and-easy donation portal. And thank you! >>

Megan Gilson is an educator and former classroom teacher. She started as an intern over a decade ago and has been Program Manager for Washtenaw County programs for eight years, during which time she earned a masters in education from Harvard.

The process of getting a story on the page is highly personal and individualized, and we tailor our programs to support writers as they discover their own voice and process.

—Megan Gilson

826michigan Program Manager, Washtenaw County

Something I think about a lot is how young people are natural storytellers. You can see this everywhere—on the playground, talking with friends, and when making up games.

Our field trips take this natural storytelling process and leverage it for writing—just last week, during the "If I Were You" field trip for third grade, we made skits about what to do if 48 tiny unicorns appeared at your front door. EVERYONE (and I mean everyone) was absolutely cracking up (including the teacher, who at one point was laughing so hard at her students’ creative ideas that she started crying).

We had students prancing around as unicorns, a ghost and homemade paper lasers for ghost-busting, and students pretending to be the front door in the skit.

This play laid the groundwork for the writing that we did just after:

• creating how-to guides with steps in order
• practicing using second person and transition words
• creating advice that is on-topic for a particular prompt

(Oh hey, those are all in the Common Core standards too!).

Later on in the field trip, students were BEGGING to do additional skits, and remarking on how much fun they were having. A student pulled me aside at one point and literally said, "Thank you so much for this field trip! It was really fun!”

One thing that’s often front-of-mind for me is the way we’re able to partner with teachers to extend their capacity. As a former classroom teacher myself, it’s just not possible to give students the 1:1 attention that they deserve when working on their writing. The process of getting a story on the page is highly personal and individualized, and we tailor our programs to support writers as they discover their own voice and process. In order for students to become confident and autonomous writers, they need to build their own personal toolkit of writing strategies and habits that work for them.

This is why I love our After-school Writing Lab so much—students can work on a writing project of their choosing while trying out different strategies and habits that writers use. We even had a day at After-school Writing Lab where we discussed the writing habits/practices that we wanted to keep, and the ones that we wanted to discard. I love that 826 is able to bring additional affirming adults into the mix that can provide the individualized listening, support, and suggestions. These adults are able to help students understand their options as writers, so when they’re writing on their own without the volunteers’ support, they can feel confident making choices that work for them and write autonomously.

A community of supportive peers and adults.

Social-emotional learning.

Play.

Connection with other humans.

Outlets for self-expression.

Strong reading and writing skills.

A love of learning.

An endless supply of curiosity about the world around us and the people in it.

Please consider making a donation to our spring fundraising drive!

Do it for all the K-12 students in southeastern Michigan who need our literacy and writing programs more than ever before. Do it for young writers who know exactly what to do if 48 tiny unicorns appeared at your front door!