Summer 2005 Youth Programs

Creative Writing Day Camps & Workshops for Children & Teens

For details about SummerWrite 2005, including registration fees, see the SummerWrite 2005 General Information Page.

Week 8: August 15–19

¡Bienvenidos! Fun with Spanish (2nd session)

• Ages: 6–8
• SY5-M1E8
• Instructor: Julie Harris
• MORNINGS: August 15–19, 9 am–11:45 am
• $95 W&B members / $105 general public

NO PASSPORT REQUIRED for this week’s Spanish language and culture adventure. This is a beginner level, no-experience-needed class, with a focus on fun immersion. We will learn Spanish greetings, colors, numbers and more. Food, music, indigenous folktales, crafts, games and abound as we experience Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru. A party complete with a piñata rounds out the week. Children also receive a mini dictionary.

Stories , Olé!

• Ages: 6–8
• SY5-D1G4
• Instructor: Annette Ramos
• AFTERNOONS: August 15–19, 12:15–3 pm
• $95 W&B members / $105 general public

Funny tales, exciting tales, and tales from far away! A good story, by a good teller, wraps you up in another world. Annette Ramos will weave her spell using stories from Latin America, and show you how she does it. You’ll learn special ways storytellers use their voices and movements, how they divide up a story into parts for easy telling and audience understanding, and how they get their audience to participate in the fun. Strong reading skills are not essential coming into this class. The experience gained with storytelling out loud will help you become a better speaker, reader and writer!

Word on the Street

• Ages: 9–13
• SY5-N2D4
• ALL DAY: Instructors: Reenah Golden & Shabaka Collier
• August 15–19, 9 am–4pm
• $195 W&B members / $215 general public

There’s a reason why Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Peter Parker work for newspapers: it’s where the action is! Our news team will scour the streets to uncover “the scoop” and cover recent events in the Neighborhood of the Arts and in popular culture. We will read and critique articles from popular magazines, entertainment TV shows, City and the Democrat and Chronicle brought in by the instructor and participants. We will then decide which feature stories, personal profiles, and arts, music , dance, book and restaurant reviews we want to write and photograph. At week’s end, we will publish an exciting newsletter for distribution in shops and cafés along ArtWalk.

Our Play: Let’s Do It For Real

• Ages: 12–15
• SY5-D4E8
• Instructor: Robert Ricks
• TWO WEEKS, ALL DAY: Weekdays, August 15–19 & August 22–26, 9 am–4 pm
• $380 W&B members / $400 general public

Are you ready to write, stage, market, and perform a play? The first week we’ll focus on creative exercises for creation of the play, make ads, and form a marketing plan. The play will express your creative ideas, your inner hopes and fears, and your perspective on events around you. You will learn to structure your writing by imitating models such as published plays and rhyming advertisement jingles. In the second week we’ll bring our play to life through theatrical technique, making improvements along the way. On August 26th we will perform to invited guests and all those folks to whom we have sold inexpensive tickets!

Writing the College Admissions Essay

• Ages: High School
• SY5-N6B7
• Instructor: Jonathan Rich
• MORNINGS: August 15–19, 9 am–Noon
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Learn to write impressive essays for admission applications, the kind that wow admissions officers by what you say and how you say it, that advertise you: creative, curious, intelligent, hard-working and involved. Bring your questions about college applications, and practice with the real thing.

Write Who You Are: Teen Women

• Ages: 14–18
• SY5-N6C9
• Instructors: Karen vanMeenen
• MORNINGS: August 15–19, 9 am–Noon
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Teen women have experiences, problems, feelings, dreams and hopes that are unique. In this retreat, we will explore these personal and cultural issues through poetry, personal essays, sharing life stories, and writing from journal prompts. Participants will be given the opportunity to write from the heart and share who they are and what they experience with a supportive group of other young women. We will also read selections from insightful books, including Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, Odd Girl Out, and Women Who Run With the Wolves, and discuss their relevance in our lives.

Every Object is a Mirror: An Introduction to Poetry

• Ages: High School
• SY5-P5K8
• Instructor: Todd Beers
• AFTERNOONS: August 15–19, 1–4 pm
• $99 W&B members / $110 general public

Explore the basic elements of poetry (imagery, symbolism, rhythm, word choice, line breaks, etc.) through group discussion and examination of published work and the poems produced by the participants. Writing will be encouraged both in and out of class, with unblocking and free-writing exercises. It will be our goal to read and write with precision, and at the same time allow the poem to have a life of its own. Sharon Olds claims, “There are three poems when we write. The poem that the poet wants to write, the poem that wants to be written, and the poem that eventually is produced.” The class will keep this in mind as ideas are exchanged and critiqued within a safe and comfortable environment

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