Philadelphia can read and write we
should all care if young people can
write because writing enables them to
articulate their future and create the
future that they want we should all care
if our kids can break because the future
of Philadelphia and all of our cities
really depends on it my name is Rachel
over and the educational director at
mighty writers and we believe that it is
important that kids learn to think and
write with clarity before starting
mighty writers I worked in educational
technology I was high in an office
building writing curriculum that was
supposed to teach kids to write but I
could see them I couldn’t help but think
that my time would be better spent
sitting down next to a young person and
asking him about his ideas all the
lessons that we’ve learned at mighty
writers about how to fight the literacy
crisis in Philadelphia come from young
people sometimes it means being goofy
and samaya was a second please student
that I met working in a charter school
in South Philadelphia she did not know
her letter serums and she was literally
afraid of language which know the answer
to
think she would go to the corner of my
classroom where I had a rocking chair
and crawl under the rocking chair and I
followed her there with flashcards and
smiled and goofy faces and some I had
taught me that it is so important to
meet our young people where they are
mighty writers first center opened to
15th and Christian in South Philadelphia
in 2009 we opened in West Philadelphia
in the Obama designated promise zone
just a few few years later our bilingual
site is in the ninth Street Market
section of Philadelphia we do all
programs there in Spanish and English
and serve a largely mexican immigrant
population that is now calling that
neighborhood home our force site is in
North Philadelphia at the historic
church of the African it’s also in the
22nd police district the city’s highest
rate of youth crime and violence so it’s
important that were there but we’re
happy to be there because there’s a lot
of energy around this historic church
and many social programs and people who
care a common misconception about many
writers is that we just do grammar I
have that guy James up there to remind
me there
more than grant the greatest hurdle that
we faced at my Writers is actually
getting students to put something on the
page that we can work with because at
all ages we find our students who have
had negative educational experiences for
one reason or another afraid to even put
a word on the page so we are building
trust with them so that they can put
something down and we can start and we
can revise and we can build them and
their ideas at each of our writing
centers in Philadelphia we have a DP a
daily Academy program which is our
after-school program every weekly team
Scholars Program we also have kids come
from all over the city and some from the
suburbs to participate in sh t prop
comic book workshop girl power and more
classes desires to put the fun in
the situation in Philadelphia is a
specially diary we’ve really do still
live in a city that is largely
segregated and too many of our young
people are not getting the educational
resources that are there do over sixty
percent of working age adults in
Philadelphia lack the basic literacy
skills to fill out a job application or
write a resume that is a loss for our
whole city as well as each of those
individuals students who come through my
writers programs learn how to articulate
their dreams how to talk about their
future and the steps that they need to
take to get to that future ninety-three
percent of our young people gone to
college the situation in Philadelphia is
also divert because the stitch because
the funding system is not set up for the
success of students and teachers too
many teacher education programs more
talking about K through 8 education
mystic sometimes teachers can go through
their whole educational career and not
necessarily take a class on how to teach
writing there are lots of other things
to learn but I think writing is one of
the most important our teachers are in a
bad position because there are no
counselors in the schools there are no
nurses arts and music programs are being
cut so teachers have to play all of
these roles while making sure their test
scores are going up and it is the
teachers and the students you suffer
teachers often lasts a couple of years
and then move on which means that none
of our students in Philadelphia or too
few of them are benefitting from
experienced teachers that know what
they’re doing so bad they can do it with
their eyes closed I’ve benefited from
the fuel is the situation gets worse I
have been in student bathrooms in
Philadelphia schools you will be
hard-pressed to find a suitor bathroom
with soap and paper towels and toilet
paper I talked to friends of mine who
went to the school
15-20 years ago and the situation was
the same then they used to call it the
trifecta when all of the bathroom
products were in stock that’s a joke
because our kids are resilient and they
can make fun of situations like this but
these are absurd situations and our
students shouldn’t have to be not having
their basic needs met when we’re asking
them to learn so here’s what we do our
regulators to try to reach Ireland
people in a way that makes sense for
them we have stocked bathrooms really
good snacks we have to talk to kids we
lift up their ideas we have
conversations and you’ll often hear
conversations at many writers stopped
mid-sentence and we’ll see wait what you
just said that’s really good let’s write
it down right now and that’s how we get
students to begin to gain confidence in
their own ideas with their own thoughts
and things that they can innovate our
worth sharing with the world we also
believe in our students ideas so much we
believe in their voices so much that we
this is one of our board members here
working on a college essay night and we
see too many of our young people come to
us to work on their college essays and
maybe they can write
paragraph essay but they haven’t always
been just to write about themselves in
their full academic career the last
thing I think we do have many writers
especially as in more recent years and
as their students have really started to
develop their voices is we’re giving
them every opportunity for public
platforms for their ideas this is
monisha and will on the SAT television
last year it’s still on youtubes we can
still share it with family they were
talking about their educational
experience and they were also talking
about their experience at migrators and
how to compare to their schools on the
right is jada at City Council in
February she shared a poem for Black
History Month and on the left is Margie
she shared her American immigrant story
at the Philadelphia chapter of the ACLU
she told me that week that she stayed up
the whole night before she gave that
speech because she wanted to make sure
that her story reflected clearly exactly
her experience her passion and her love
of both the United States and her native
Mexican lady writers of the port in the
storm for Philadelphia young people what
that storm is depends upon a child
sometimes
it is an underfunded School where they
face bullying or violence sometimes it’s
a busy family life where they’re taking
regular responsibility for younger
siblings and cousins sometimes it’s
simply a situation where they have never
been asked to write about themselves and
that was going to college essay we
proved at my dividers to be bring best
practices of writing to kids with
stories to tell we also are able to
respond to things that are happening in
the moment in a way that our best
teachers do when there was a lot of news
about what big news meant our kids were
coming to us with questions so we
started a workshop about reliable
sources and how to differentiate between
use and opinion and propaganda similarly
our immigrant students at my Raiders
alpha Toro I’ve been facing some fear
lately we’ve been talking to them about
that and one of our board members put
together Illustrated migration stories
which is a comic book workshop in which
students are unable to write about the
spheres if kids can write then their
future is bright if they can articulate
their dreams then they can follow them
and if kids are on the path to success so is our city