SELI Visits Clubs

Three additional process writing clubs! Here we see boys from the Albert Academy Junior Secondary School rehearsing new topics during my visit, and we see Government Model JSS club conducting a content conference. SELI provides public library cards for club members, but reading skills are developed within the workshop itself, in listening to someone else read aloud so you can respond; in reading your work aloud to a group--even in drafting and revising the students are constantly re-reading what they have written. The Government Rokel Junior Secondary School was doing rehearsing and drafting when SELI visited their club. We credit the facilitators for holding club meetings regularly, because of the shortage of space in these campuses where both morning and afternoon schools operate in the same compound. Attendance is affected by other school events and by personal incidents in the students' lives during these stringent economic times in Sierra Leone. We praise our Leading Young Writers facilitators for staying persistent and positive for the sake of the children!

Young Writers Clubs

Junior secondary school students are busy carrying out the writing process in Young Writers Clubs in several locations now. Most are second-year JSS II students, and they are working on writing their true personal experiences. The students at UM Secondary School for Girls are having a rehearsing session, where everyone is drawing up a list of personal experience topics from her own life that she can write about. The club at Freetown Secondary School for Girls is doing peer content conferencing--one author is presenting her first draft to receive feedback on the content from those listening, to find out if what she has written makes sense to them, or needs more background information, and so on. SELI's Young Writers (most of whom are from Services JSS in Wilberforce) are drafting and revising--some preparing for a content conference, some for editing, but all busy on their own life experience topics.

Club members find that analyzing their life experiences involves exploring their cultural backgrounds. Club leaders try to build confidence in the students, a community of learners, and a positive experience with teachers. We believe that this is the way to nurture responsible freedom of expression.

Leading Young Writers in Progress

Our junior secondary school teachers from five schools in Freetown (Gov't. Model JSS, Gov't. Rokel JSS, FSSG, UMSSG, and Albert Academy) have completed 3 weeks of their 4 week workshop and are looking forward to sharing their enthusiasm about writing with students in their school Young Writers clubs. You can see them here doing an exercise in revising writing; doing peer conferencing, and typing their revisions into netbook computers. Unfortunately, SELI has been able to pay for only 3-1/2 of the netbooks being used for this workshop so their use in the next Leading Young Writers workshop is not certain.

Press Release: Leading Young Writers

Leading Young Writers begins on August 24th! See our press release here! The best writing teachers are teachers who are writers themselves. Short term outcomes we are expecting are an increase in teacher enthusiasm for writing, a desire to share writing and reading with students; an opening-out of both teachers' cultural voices; and the development of a pool of writing workshop facilitators. Longer-term outcomes we expect are improved student academic success in language arts; the sustained and productive use of teaching strategies that promote critical thinking in language arts classes in schools; and a transformation in students' attitudes about, and habits of, critical thinking, writing and reading.

Leading Young Writers

Beginning August 17 SELI plans to train and support teachers to run extra-curricular Young Writers clubs, in which students improve their written language skills as they read and develop as critical thinkers. This project is being planned in coordination with the Childhood Foundation

A workshop of 24 contact hours will be conducted for 10 teachers from five schools (4-week workshops, meeting for 1-1/2 hr sessions 4 times per week) prior to the opening of the school year; with subsequent follow up support visits by the facilitator during club meetings. There will also be periodic support reunions of the participants. The workshops will have teachers writing in process writing workshop settings, using netbook computers which we do not yet have. We especially need 10 netbooks to train writing teachers--$450 apiece including shipping. A $50 contribution will place 1/9 of a netbook at SELI where it's needed Can you help by making a donation toward the purchase of these netbooks? See details in the side panel.

. . . And Our Books Appear!

The SELI Young Writers Club have spent the last couple of weeks completing the revision and editing of their personal experiences, and compiling them as chapters in their own books. This time, everyone's book had the same title: My Life; 1st Edition. All the authors studied the Dedications and the "About the Author" descriptions in a number of trade books, and wrote their own. Friday, June 12, 2009 was the last meeting of the Club for this school year, but we haven't stopped writing--we're authors now! We do plan to resume meeting during the 2009-2010 school year.

Young Voices

The Young Writers Club has started publishing a newsletter! Young Voices will have a different theme in each issue.

Fire is the theme of Volume I, Issue 1, dated March, 2009. Read it here! Of the final drafts our Young Writers have produced so far, four were about personal experiences with fires and the sorrow they cause. Our club says, fires matter! Take care to avoid them!

SELI's International Mother Tongue Day

On Saturday, February 21st, from 1-3:00 pm, the Sentinel English Language Institute hosted an event for the 10th anniversary of International Mother Tongue (Language) Day, declared by UNESCO in 1999. Admission was free with registration in advance. All participants chose the primary language they wished to write in, and spent an hour writing a poem, story, personal experience, and/or a folktale. Then we all gathered in language groups, with light refreshments, to read our work aloud to others who understand our language. The writers took their work home with them, hopefully to continue writing in their mother tongue. For a few, writing in their mother tongue was not new, but for most it was a very challenging, new experience. The New Citizen newspaper was present, and they wrote along with us! The participants thought this should be an annual event, and proposed that those present--just twelve this year, writing in Mende, Themne, Koranko, Susu, and Krio--keep encouraging each other to write, and be the catalyst unit to publicize the event next year. Wonderful idea!

A Visitor

On Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 19, 2009, the U.S.-based writer, Kewulay Kamara, visited our SELI Young Writers Club.
First he participated in a student content conference, and then he told us all how writing became a part of his life. He wanted to know about all the students' lives, and asked what they meant when they said they had left their villages to become educated. To them, "educated" meant reading and writing in English. He said he considered village people already educated: educated in the ways of the weather and of the harvests; in listening to become wise; in knowing how to protect the water and the land. . . .

He told the students their writing can help other people as much as themselves but only if it is sincere. He said that because their words have the power to change lives, they must take care to end their pieces with a positive message. Many of our members are writing very sad pieces about losing someone who was close to them. Now that we are thinking about how to end these pieces in a positive way, some have realized that the person they lost is still in their hearts, making them stronger.

A student asked our visitor if he had written a poem. Mr. Kewulay recited one for us in Kuranko (which more than half the students present could understand), and explained how he came to write it and what it meant. We were all entranced by the sounds of the poem and its evocative meaning. When one of the students asked if he could suggest a name for our writing club, he answered with a question: do we write only in English, or in other Sierra Leonean languages, too?

In our writing club, skills are taught within the context of solving the problems that real authors encounter when they write. When professional writers visit, they make this authentic connection even more real. Mr. Kewulay left us more aware of the life stories we have in us, and we seem now to have more writing choices than we did before.