Houston, TX, June 1, 2010 — Nearly 800 students across Houston are taking a break from the formulaic writing suited for standardized testing to write for pleasure instead through Writers in the Schools (WITS) Summer Creative Writing Workshops offered June 7 – 25th at Annunciation Orthodox School, Bellaire High School, Nottingham Elementary, and The Shlenker School. For 20 years, WITS and Rice University’s School Literacy and Culture Project (SLC) have enriched children with a qualitative program that transforms students into published authors in 3-weeks.
The workshops began as a collaborative project between WITS and the Center of Education at Rice University’s to bridge the gap between teaching basic writing skills and applying writing as an art form. By pairing writers and teachers, both professionals understand more about the developmental process required from a literary education, while keeping the student-teacher ratio low with each class.
Children from across the Houston area will write stories, poetry, non-fiction and plays, as well as simply reading for pleasure. Students take a writing tour of an art museum or work with visiting professional artists to gain a new perspective for their writing. At the end of the camp, students publish their work in bound anthologies. To celebrate their success, they also do performances and readings for their families and friends during the final week of camp. Houston Press described the workshops as the “best summer programs for kids.”
WITS Summer Creative Writing Workshops are supported by The Brown Foundation, The City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, ExxonMobil Community Summer Jobs Programs, The Houston Endowment, Kroger, The Menil Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Rice University’s School Literacy and Culture Project, The Simmons Foundation, and Texas Commission on the Arts.
About WITS
WITS, a local non-profit organization founded in 1983, provides students with year-long creative writing programs in schools, community centers, hospitals, and homeless shelters with the mission to engage students in the pleasure and power of reading and writing. Ranked the number one literary organization in Texas by the Texas Commission on the Arts, WITS professional poets, fiction writers, and playwrights work in year-long programs in over 350 classrooms in order to help students develop their creative and analytical thinking skills.
About The Rice University School Literacy and Culture Project
The Rice University School Literacy and Culture Project (SLC) is dedicated to helping teachers acquire and apply advanced knowledge in several areas related to literacy and schooling. These areas include early literacy, early childhood development, writing, and cultural differences. SLC provides year-long, classroom-based mentored learning for teachers through the widely respected Classroom Storytelling Project. A recent SLC research study and book by SLC founding director Patsy Cooper have both received national honors.
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