Sandburg HS holds Scholastic Writer's Workshop

For the second year in a row, Carl Sandburg English teacher Judy McAuliffe offered a Scholastic Writer's Workshop to about 25 incoming freshmen. McAuliffe, partnering with both Scholastic and the Chicago Area Writing Project, offered the free-two day enrichment workshop to students who were willing to create a piece of writing for submission to the 2017 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards program. Last year, several of Sandburg's participants earned gold, silver, and bronze level recognition for their creative pieces.

As she planned for this year's workshop, McAuliffe, a Literacy Lab interventionist at Sandburg, decided to invite some of the Lit Lab student tutors she and colleagues have trained to participate as "writing mentors" to the new group of freshmen. In addition, Tom Maguire, Sandburg's student Literary Magazine sponsor, brought along members of his writing team as additional reviewers and writing partners to the freshman participants.

About four weeks separated the two day workshop, giving time for these burgeoning writers to think about their pieces, but there was great excitement in the room during revision activities and writing conferences. The power of the written word came through loudly and clearly.

"I really liked being able to sit down with another student and be able to share ideas and help each other, said Nathalee Lococo. "It was interesting to see their thought process and the way they not only thought about their stories, but also what they took out of mine. The writing territories helped me a lot to come up with new ideas in an organized format and is something I look back on now before writing a piece. Overall the experience was one I would gladly repeat and I am hoping for the ability to do so in the future."

Mentor Regina San Andres remarked, "being a part of this experience and mentoring the incoming freshmen felt like I was helping to create a tangible difference in their writing. It was very rewarding to be able to share my own skills in order for them to further enhance the talented work that they already had."