Overview

Submitted by lmcisaac on Fri, 04/10/2009 - 2:59pm

The Young Writers Project is a Vermont 501(c)3 nonprofit that engages students to write, helps them improve their writing skills and finds audiences for their work. It works with students in grades K-12 in Vermont and the greater Lebanon, N.H., area.

Writing skills are essential for success in school and in the workplace. Studies show that students with strong writing skills learn more and, in the workplace, are more apt to be hired or promoted. YWP believes that providing an audience for student writing motivates young writers to try harder, learn more and write better. Receiving objective, positive feedback from peers or external readers helps them gain confidence and grow. Giving feedback to others improves students' critical thinking skills and their ability to revise their own work more successfully.

YWP is continually developing new ways to use the Internet and digital technology to enhance engagement of students, to train teachers and to create authentic audiences. The Web is a comfortable place for students to share writing with their peers and to build communities of writers who value writing and work to help each other become better writers.

YWP works with media and arts partners to create external audiences for students' best work in print, on radio and TV and on stage.

Since the fall of 2006, YWP has:

  • Published the work of at least 2,500 students in its Newspaper Series. This work was selected from more than 16,000 submissions from students in nearly 300 Vermont and N.H. schools. YWP has partnered with a dozen organizations to provide other ways for student work to be “published.”
  • Created this student-led Web site, youngwritersproject.org, which currently has 4,300 registered student users and 600 visits – and at least 150 new pieces of writing – each day. On this Web site students share writing, give and receive feedback, comment on the news, post original podcasts and songs and work on projects. The site is a model of a vibrant, changing online community that is civil and supportive.
  • Created an innovative College Mentors program, involving at least 50 students each semester who give feedback to students on the Young Writers Project Web site. College Mentors have provided feedback to an estimated 2,000 students.
  • Developed leading-edge Digital Writing Classrooms – private, fully-supported Web sites for use by teachers and afterschool programs to help teach writing. Through these customized Web sites, YWP is working with about 35-40 schools and afterschool groups serving an estimated 5,000 students. Through them, YWP has been able to reach a broad range of student writers – particularly those who are “at risk” because of disinterest or because they come from economically disadvantaged or minority backgrounds.
  • Created a Master's Level Practium in Digital Writing for teachers. It currently caps the program to 15 teachers a year from throughout Vermont and N.H.