Programs

The Young Authors’ Book Project (YABP) showcases and celebrates youth voices. Over the course of the school year, students get hands-on experience with every aspect of writing, editing, and publishing—from the rough pages of drafting all the way to a polished, professionally-published book.

Our most recent YABP book, “We Matter: Notes from DC’s Generation Z,” is an essay collection by seventh-grade journalists from Brookland Middle School!

Mondays through Thursdays can be rough thanks to all the homework that comes with the daily academic grind. From 3:30-6:00 PM, though…POOF! The work gets done during our two-hour Monday-Thursday volunteer-supported homework help sessions, complete with a half-hour of creative writing.

If you’re interested in having your student write with us, fill out the form below and we’ll email you when a spot opens up!

DC students and their teachers join us in the 826DC writing center for an unforgettable morning or afternoon.

Storytelling & Bookmaking (Grades 1-4)

A dynamic group storytelling activity where students write collaboratively before they complete the narrative on their own.

Know a young writer just bursting with ideas? Want to introduce a reluctant reader to new worlds? Join us for any one of our wonderful Saturday or Evening Writing Workshops where, in two hours, young writers will explore a new topic and leave with a piece of writing of which they can be proud.

LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW: A PLACE MEMOIR (grades 8-12)
May 7, 5:30 PM to 7 PM, 826DC
Emotions play a huge role in how we remember places important to us. Students explore this by writing memoirs, using plot, dialogue, and description to bring their stories to life.

TRUE CONNECTIONS: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH SOCIAL MEDIA (grades 8-12)
May 21, 5:30 PM to 7 PM, 826DC
In this workshop from 826NYC, students write about their personal experiences with social media and online platforms.

At Reading All-Stars, 826DC’s Saturday literacy program, students from Harriet Tubman Elementary School work one-on-one with volunteer mentors to strengthen their reading and writing skills.

826DC offers support to teachers in the K-12 classroom through this program, one of our most flexible and teacher-driven. Teachers can choose a curriculum delivery model or for 826DC small group/one-on-one support. In-Schools can range from one class period to multi-week sessions.

The program is 100% free to schools, teachers, and students.

Editing and Publishing 826DC joined five classrooms of 11th grade students to work in small groups on revisions for a personal memoir project around food writing over the course of two days. 826DC then worked remotely with the students via Google Docs to proofread and copyedit their work. Finally, 826DC designed and published a collection of the students’ writing and corresponding recipes. Poetry Writing Workshop During National Poetry Month in April, 826DC led a poetry writing workshop for a group of 9th-12th graders, focusing on a reading and discussing a poem and guiding the students through writing poetic responses to the work. Students’ poems were subsequently submitted for publication consideration on the Poetry Foundation’s website. Group Storytelling 826DC led a storytelling writing workshop with 1st-3rd graders. We introduced the students to the basics of any narrative (protagonist/hero, antagonist/villain, plot, setting, characters, and dialogue), and then guided the students through writing the story as a group. The students then wrote their own individual endings to the story and illustrated the pages themselves. Each student received a bound copy of the book to keep.

Realistic Fiction Over three days, 826DC led a lesson with 7th graders to build their “show, don’t tell” descriptive language skills.

LoNoMeMo (Local Novel Mentoring Month) 826DC volunteers served as mentors for high school students who (frantically) wrote 50,000 word novels within the span of a month.