826 Valencia - 826 Valencia's Programming

826 Valencia's Programming

826 Valencia's programming includes:

In-schools programs

• Teams of volunteers visit local high-needs schools around San Francisco to support teachers and provide assistance to students as they tackle various projects, such as school newspapers, research papers, oral histories, and college-entrance essays.

Workshops

• 826 Valencia offers free workshops on weeknights and weekends designed to foster creativity and strengthen writing skills in a variety of genres such as cartooning, college application essay writing, or starting a ’zine. From the playful to the practical, all workshops are project-based and are taught by experienced, accomplished professionals.

Field trips

• Up to four times each week during the school year, 826 Valencia welcomes an entire class into the writing lab for a morning of custom-designed, project-based learning. Students may experience a roundtable discussion with a local author, enjoy an active workshop focused on poetry or journalism, or finalize pieces of writing for publication.

After-school tutoring

• Five days a week, dozens of students of all skill levels and interests come to 826 for free, one-on-one tutoring. Most of these students are from the predominately Latino neighborhood in the Mission District, and few speak English at home. When their homework is finished, some children work on extracurricular writing projects; others prefer to grab a book off the shelves and do some quiet reading.

Student publishing

• 826 Valencia publishes an array of student-authored literary journals, newspapers, books, and chapbooks. The largest publishing project each year is the Young Authors’ Book Project. In its seventh year, the project is the culmination of a semester-long collaboration with a local, public, San Francisco high school to write, edit, and design a book that is then published professionally and sold in bookstores nationwide.