826LA is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Our services are structured around our understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.
With this in mind, we provide drop-in tutoring, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications.
All of our programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student's power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.
The Echo Park Time Travel Mart now has... Pastports® and event tickets! You can also shop online for books, T-shirts, Poketo wallets, and posters. Also, this timestream's brick-and-mortar Time Travel Mart is open Monday to Friday, 12pm–8pm; Saturday & Sunday, 12pm–6pm.
Your contributions to 826LA enable us to offer our free student programs.Please consider donating. Thank you!
Way back in December, LA Chamber Orchestra composer-in-residence Derek Bermel came to 826LA East with his clarinet Clarence. He spoke with our students (or rather Clarence did), and that kicked off a discussion about the different ways humans and other creatures communicate–with words and music, barks and squeaks and honks.
Since then, a number of students have explored these ideas further and written poems inspired by Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals. These poems will be presented at this Sunday's LA Chamber Orchestra family concert. A few of them are below—enjoy!
"Tortoises" by Nicholas
They
love to eat
lettuce.
They are tiny and big and fat and slim.
They are very…
…slow
"Kangaroos" by Oscar
I am a kangaroo
I can jump high
I am brown
I like being brown
That’s all
"People with Long Ears" by Malik
They need one more person
Evil people trying to take over the world
Scary, Virus, Zombies
Deformed ears: Big, Saggy, Stretchy, and Long
Rule the World
"Pianists" by Anthony
Someone is alone in the park.
The man wanted to get married.
The man was poor.
He was single.
He wanted a dog,
and a cat.
A wolf is by him.
He is old and he has white hair.
"Fossils" by Alexis
Someone dancing sitting alone
All so lonely
Thinking of someone to dance with
Then finding someone to dance with
For a contest to do
So we do this contest
For a trophy to win
She finds somebody to dance with
While they’re dancing
They look at each others eyes
They say you have beautiful eyes.
Then dance slow
Like you’re in a talent show
Like a love story by Taylor Swift.
And thank you.
Posted by Danny Hom, Programs and Social Media Coordinator
One of our notable accomplishments at 826LA is giving students the chance to play with the technology they might need one day as working authors. Just as our volunteering handbook says good writing isn't always born out of lightning and thunderbolts (i.e., it's not instantaneous), we believe good writing education isn't always done with the quill and inkpot. You may be following our blog, our RSS feed, our online journalismcontent, or our occasional YouTube offerings. One of our students, Cammeron, 13, even tweets from the Venice Writing Lab.
Many of our school offerings merge old and new ways of writing, too. We go into classrooms and sometimes bring lucky classrooms to 826LA, where they have great tools at their disposal. Just a couple of weeks ago, two classrooms from West Hollywood Elementary came with Mr. Acosta and Mr. Vasquez to tackle a Storytelling & Bookmaking field trip. Ordinarily, our typist works on a Mac while our illustrator draws by hand, but for this field trip, we test-ran an idea from one of our pro instructors and past Volunteers of the Month, Brick Maier. Brick's already known to many of our students for teaching Tabletop Moviemaking. He took a stab at doing illustrations digitally, on a Wacom Graphire pen tablet as students came up with a plot.
Brick writes:
I arrived early to test out the projector, Photoshop, and pen tablet setup. Satisfied, I used a high-tech cup of pens in front of the projector to conceal my work with the group. Nearly 40 kids poured in, and I found a curious gallery of students had strategically placed themselves directly behind me to check my progress. I am used to working under deadlines, but I could barely keep up with the ideas for these stories. Every 15 minutes or so I would come up for air and reveal what I had been working on. It was fun for them to see characters emerge from their collective story. My final showing was received with a general round of applause. One observant student suggested that the bucket of bananas used for the bow and arrow to fight the evil spider should have a bit more yellow. Fair enough. A bit more yellow it is.
We turned the morning group's story into an illustrated book, The Day the Brothers Saved Their Sister. Here's a little piece:
Once upon a time in the future, on a planet called Magoogle, there lived two apes named Bob and Max Janette. They were brothers and partners, and they had a golden flying car. They really liked to race their golden flying car, and they also liked to watch TV. The brothers were generally very happy. However, the brothers were very competitive and would sometimes get into fights… One day Tracy stole the keys to the golden flying car and took it to her boyfriend Boogle's house.
An important part of our work as a writing center is the community presence we've offered via brick-and-mortar spaces in Venice (since 2005) and Echo Park (since 2007). Volunteers who tutor at 826LA are serving predominantly local families, by-and-large neighborhood people who benefit from one-to-one writing instruction (offered during walk-in after-school hours and Make-an-Appointment Tutoring) and wouldn't have it elsewhere for free. Beyond the basic writing we cover to help kids with their homework, we believe kids should control writing, plan writing, and dream about writing. That's why we fill their time at 826 with creative prompts like the ones from our After-School Tutoring chapbooks.
If you're looking for a late holiday gift or just a unique document of what young people are thinking about, consider picking up one of our student chapbooks when they're released. They're available for various low prices at our Echo Park Time Travel Mart store, and if you subscribe to our donor community as a Chapbook Patron you'll not only receive regular copies in the mail, but also get a thank-you, to boot (for your help funding in-house production). Supporting 826LA is like supporting an independent bookstore, an academic skills program, and community of working artists all in one.
Our most recent book produced by 826LA West students was the Morrissey-inspired The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get. Each student who contributed to it had the responsibility to select one song by the Smiths or a Smiths member solo project, use that song as a title, and conceive a situation where that title might have an interesting meaning. You'll have to visit the store and read an actual copy to get a look at the works themselves, but a couple of stories that didn't quite get released with the regular anthology are included in this post to give you a taste. See what our students can do with their creative minds (and a tutor's help)!
Pretty Girls Make Graves
by William
Every boy goes through a breakup a couple of times in a lifetime, but some breakups are worse than others. Some can be violent, but some can be confrontational only because of the words. Girls can put any guy down if they're close enough. Even at a guy's happiest times, it's possible. To all guys: be careful who you let in your life.
"Pretty Girls Make Graves" is a Smiths song from their self-titled debut album. William goes to Mark Twain Middle School and is in the 7th grade.
Suffer Little Children
by Margarito
Little children will suffer when they're young because they will start doing homework in kindergarten. They will start crying because they don't want to go to school and they will feel bad about having to go to school for the rest of their lives.
"Suffer Little Children" is the closing track on the Smiths' self-titled debut album. Margarito goes to Westminster Elementary Computer Science and Math Magnet and is in the 5th grade.
The 826LA printing presses have lurched back into action! 826LA East's Echo Press released the year's first chapbook, I Will Eat You and Gobble You Up, and 826LA West's Dogtown Books quickly followed suit with Elfin Loaves Like to Eat Humans. (Both are available at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.) Our after-school tutoring students worked hard on these potentially frightening and promisingly imaginative collections, and they're busy working on their next chapbooks, to be published in early December.
In other news, 826LA East has been working with high school students (from the Downtown Magnets and Fairfax High) creating their own 'zine, focusing on fashion, photography, design, and art, and our in-house newspapers, The Venice Wave and 826LA Good Times, are at work on the final issues of 2009. If you're interested in helping our students with their publishing projects, let us know at iwanttohelp@826la.org.
It's a rainy day here in Los Angeles: timid cars pack the freeways, trees strain under the weather, everything is just a bit more gloom than normal–everything except for 826LA, at least. Students are still swarming to the tutoring center looking for help on homework and tips on writing projects. "What if, say, my dinosaur friend ate people, but didn't swallow them? Like, he helped them get around faster, then spit them out. Would people believe that?"
As the first moments of 2010 grow steadily closer, 826LA is winding down this year with a bunch of great activities. And simultaneously, we're gearing up for next year! On our plate for '10: fresh field trips, creative new in-school project and on-site workshop ideas, and more, more, more after-school tutoring. It's going to make for some amazing products. (As you may know, we're running a project-based model at 826LA, which means that when students leave our activities, they've got something in the form of a product that may be as traditional as a magazine or as intangible as a pop song, as serious as a manifesto or as whimsical as comic.
Cast members from the hit show Glee autographed their favorite books and donated them to 826LA. These books are being auctioned as a fundraiser for 826LA this holiday season. By bidding on one of these you are not only getting a one-of-a-kind gift, but you're also supporting 826LA's free writing programs for youth.
Both of these beautiful cards were designed by Amy Martin (the designer of our popular Time Travel Posters, which also make great gifts!). They can be purchased in boxes of eight, or boxes of eight Holiday Donation Cards (with inserts). If you are planning to make donations to 826LA in honor of loved ones this year, we can include a beautiful personalized card with your gift. This card personalization service includes a customized insert, letting the recipient know about the donation.
They are 4½" x 6¼" with a blank inside, metallic and embossed details, and matching envelopes.
Left, 2008 826LA Ice Skaters Card 4½" w x 6¼" h, letterpress printed, blank inside, with matching envelopes.
Right, 2009 Future Snowflake Card 6¼" w X 4½" h, metallic and debossed details, with matching envelopes.
Please click to view the full card.
Cards begin shipping December 1. You can get these cards at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart or online!
826LA is looking for interns! Come exercise your writing skills, work directly with teachers and students, and gain valuable experience in the many aspects of educational programming and event planning.
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STAPLES Gift Cards.
Trader Joe's Gift Cards.
High-speed color copier.
Digital video camera with external mic.
Digital projector.
White printer paper.
Notebooks and loose leaf paper for kids.
Erasers.
Pens.
Office tape.
Staplers.
Paperclips.
Large butcher paper pads.
Name tags.
Paper cups.
Drinks for the kids in tutoring. More »
