826DC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around our understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.
With this in mind we provide drop-in tutoring, field trips, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. All of our programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student's power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.
Get Used to the Seats, 826DC’s newest publication, is on sale now. The seniors of Wilson and Cardozo High Schools came together in this poetic, practical high school how-to for freshman about surviving love, bullies, the perils of cheating and much more. Purchase your copy of Get Used to the Seats now.
The Way We See It: Complete Coverage of the Nation's Capital From the Inside Out is on sale now! Fiction, poetry, essays, and journalism by students at Cardozo High School offer a unique take on one of the most famous but most misunderstood cities in the world.
Purchase your copy of The Way We See It today.
August 26th is Youth Literacy Day! 826 writing centers across the country support over 22,000 kids a year and you can help with just a simple text.
Here’s how: Text “WRITE” to 20222 to donate $8.26 (plus a $1.74 service fee) to ur your favorite 826 Center (though we’re partial to the one nearest to the White House).
If text donations aren’t your style, you can still donate online. Just visit 826on826.org to send support our way.
Spread the word about Youth Literacy Day on Facebook and Twitter , and pass along the link to 826on826.org to share the news with your friends.
A one-time donation of $10.00 (an $8.26 donation and a $1.74 service fee) will be added to your mobile phone bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. Msg&Data Rates May Apply. All charges are billed by and payable to your mobile service provider. Service is available on most carriers. Donations are collected for the benefit of 826 by the Mobile Giving Foundation and subject to the terms found at www.hmgf.org/t. You can unsubscribe at any time by texting STOP to 20222; reply HELP to 20222 for help.
It’s Tuesday evening on a Columbia Heights porch, and Minh Lê and Oliver Uberti are showing off a roll of toilet paper labeled "Field Journal: For When You Have To Go Write Now." Twelve 826DC volunteers chuckle. There’s already been talk of scorpion-finding ultra-violet flashlights, “mega-sand,” baby onesies that read work in progress, and a debate about of how to sell socks to budding unnaturalists who explore marshland areas.
“The label,” said Oliver, “could just say DRY SOCKS! in big letters.”
And now: toilet paper. But it’s standard brainstorming protocol for Oliver and Minh who for the last six months have been busy developing the dioramas, caves and other fun products to be sold at The Museum of Unnatural History, 826DC’s future storefront. The two friends devised the concept shortly after a January volunteer orientation and have been working hard since to make it a reality. “We both knew that the idea was super-elastic, and it brings out both the nerdiness and the earnestness of DC,” says Oliver. “Between its museums and its galleries, this city is essentially the world's attic. What better place for The Unnaturalist Society to set up shop?”
Last week we tore things down, this week we're building back up again.
Construction continues on The Museum of Unnatural History, led by the unstoppable team of architect Davis Carter Scott, our project managers at Jones Lang LaSalle, and the fine folks at HITT construction. After seeing the wall plan, we have to admit: its starting to look an awful lot like a writing center.
Take a look at the pics below:
If you want to donate to help the construction effort or anything else we have in store for the future, you can do so here.
You'll have to be speedy to nab these limited-edition tee-shirts, custom-designed and hand-drawn by singer-songwriter Neko Case. Sales of the Mercury Cougar-Rama Muscle Car-‘Splosion tee, and the upcoming ’67 Mercury Cougar auction (launching soon on eBay), benefit 826DC's free student programming.
The fine folks at Poketo printed these snazzy tees--consult their size chart for your fit.
Our summer interns Jen, Jane, and Erin invite you to stuff your face and feed your mind at the 826DC book and bake sale! Come hungry for homemade baked goods and gently used books at our table in Eastern Market on Saturday, August 7th from 9 am to 3 pm. Download the flyer here.
Your support is greatly appreciated as we make big moves this fall to open up our new center and storefront, The Museum of Unnatural History, and provide greater resources to feed DC’s young creative minds.
Baked goods will be individually priced provided by our volunteers (who also happen to be culinary geniuses). The books available at the swap will come straight from the shelves of our erudite volunteers, and will be all-you-can-carry for a donation of $20 to 826DC.
With our lease signed, permits secured, and our build and design teams all in lock-step, we’re proud to announce that this week construction officially kicked off on the Museum of Unnatural History, a monument to the long-forgotten “Unnaturalist Society”—a group of bizarre, outcast scientists who believed that “the path to truth often leads through the absurd.” More importantly, the site will will also double as 826DC’s own writing center, hosting workshops, drop-in tutoring and innovative publishing opportunities for students throughout the district (learn more here, and here, and here).
But first: demolition. Our construction team, HITT Contracting, Inc., descended onto our new site in Columbia Heights this week to gut the ceilings, strip the floors, and set the stage for museum displays, “build your own species” stations, dioramas, as well as student study and tutoring areas come this fall.
We’re on our way, but we still need all the help we can get. So if you’d like to donate to help construction or future programming, you can find out more here.
In the meantime, check out the gallery below for a tour of the contained mayhem, and stay tuned for more construction updates as we move toward our opening.
Recently, I had coffee with Jen Girdish, who has been heavily involved in coordinating 826DC’s student publication projects (and was most recently a recipient of the “Ladies Prosthetic Grower Award” in May’s “Moustache-a-thon”). Jen’s a journalist who likes to run, watch TV, and cuddle with her fiancé.
She talked with me about the “bad, unrequited love poems” she wrote in college, falling in love with Joan Didion, and what it takes to bring student voices to life on paper for 826DC.
***
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I grew up in Pittsburgh and even though I desperately wanted to get out of Western PA, I ended up going to the University of Pittsburgh. And even then, I moved around a lot between quite a few “underdog” cities like Pittsburgh. I moved to Austin and spent a lot of time getting coffee for people and escorting Jack Valenti to the bathroom. I also lived in Kansas City and Laurenburg, NC where you had to drive forty-five minutes just to see a movie. I recently spent some time in Little Rock when my fiancé was working on the Healthcare Campaign. I’d like to think that my sacrifice of eating nothing but fried food contributed directly to the bill passing.
Recently you helped publish Get Used to the Seats, a collection of essays and poetry by seniors in DC area high schools. Can you tell me about your role in the student publication projects and how they come to life?
I was the managing editor and project coordinator, so I helped organize and run all aspects of the production of the book. That involves organizing workshops, editing student work, selecting the pieces, and coordinating the design and production. The concept of book started in Belle Belew’s class [at Wilson High School]. Her students had a “Dear Freshman” assignment, where they wrote a letter to their freshman selves, and one of them suggested it should be a book. We agreed. There were three different classes and each class met once a week. We played with a variety of writing styles such as text message poems and essays about “getting caught.” Eleven students even got to record their essays at NPR, which was recorded onto a CD and included with the book.
Things are moving fast here this summer, and as we move into another busy school year we’re on the lookout for some fun excellent folks to come join our team. Click the links below to learn more about the positions:
So if you’re interested in teaching, writing, fun and hard work (not exactly in that
order), please submit your materials to the appropriate contact for each listing.
We look forward to hearing from you.
In June, we asked ninth graders at Duke Ellington School for the Arts what they believe.
Here’s what they told us: That you can learn a lot more from Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law than you ever wanted to know; that the pen is not always mightier than the sword; and that personal successes can far outweigh public ones.
We learned those and many more bits of wisdom throughout the five weeks of our “This I Believe” workshop with Ms. Foster’s journalism class at Ellington. Led by volunteer Cathy Smith, it focused on the possibilities of the personal essay, and was patterned after the famous NPR radio series (which, sadly, went off the air last year).
The workshop culminated in a few students having the opportunity to record their finished essays, such as Madison Hartke-Weber, whose essay “Friendships, Destiny, and Dependence”—subject matter: self-explanatory—you can listen to below.
Big, big thanks to Madison (also a recent winner of the ArenaStage Student Playwrights Project), Ms. Foster, sound technician Billy Hickey, Cathy Smith, our participating volunteers and the rest of the students who helped close the school year with this fun, enlightening project.
We believe there’s no better way to end a school year than to publish some student writing. For the last four weeks, 826DC volunteers have worked with Ms. Lerenman’s seventh graders at KIPP Key Academy to write and produce chapbooks that feature an array of short poems that include sobering insights about the current economy as well as odes to Pizza Hut.
From the Declaration of Independence-style poems to pantoums, 826DC volunteer Eleanor Graves presented students with a new form each week in which to express themselves through writing. They began each session with freewriting on topics ranging from their favorite foods to politics to what goes on in the hallways of their school.
“We wanted to introduce the kids to some new ways of creating poetry that would also be fun for them,” says Eleanor, an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in journals like Phoebe, Practice, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. “We discovered that writing can be both formal and free, serious and silly, all in one poem.”
Our thanks to KIPP’s seventh grade teacher Flora Lerenman, as well as the 826DC volunteers who helped students brainstorm through bouts of writer’s block. Check out some of the students’ work here.
August 26th is Youth Literacy Day! 826 writing centers across the country support over 22,000 kids a year and you can help with just a simple text.
It’s Tuesday evening on a Columbia Heights porch, and Minh Lê and Oliver Uberti are showing off a roll of toilet paper labeled "Field Journal: For When You Have To Go Write Now." Twelve 826DC volunteers chuckle. There’s already been talk of scorpion-finding ultra-violet flashlights, “mega-sand,” baby onesies that read 
Last week we 
Are you fast enough to catch a Mercury Cougar?
Our summer interns Jen, Jane, and Erin invite you to stuff your face and feed your mind at the 826DC book and bake sale! Come hungry for homemade baked goods and gently used books at our table in Eastern Market on Saturday, August 7th from 9 am to 3 pm. Download the flyer 
Recently, I had coffee with 
Things are moving fast here this summer, and as we move into another busy school year we’re on the lookout for some fun excellent folks to come join our team. Click the links below to learn more about the positions:
In June, we asked ninth graders at Duke Ellington School for the Arts what they believe. 
We believe there’s no better way to end a school year than to publish some student writing. For the last four weeks, 826DC volunteers have worked with Ms. Lerenman’s seventh graders at KIPP Key Academy to write and produce chapbooks that feature an array of short poems that include sobering insights about the current economy as well as odes to Pizza Hut.