September Community Outreach
Dear Friends of Project Write Now:
This February, we celebrated Black History Month in our programs, honoring some of our favorite Black writers— including Langston Hughes, Amanda Gorman, Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, Maya Angelou, and Ross Gay—by sharing their works as inspiration for writing and conversation.
A highlight of the month was meeting Ross Gay IN PERSON during Monmouth University’s Toni Morrison Day. Through our partnership with the Department of English’s graduate school program, we were able to bring a group of our students from Asbury Park High School to participate in the day’s events, including Ross Gay’s author reading. We gifted a copy of Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude to each student, which they had signed by Gay.
And one of our students, Robert, read an original piece during the event! You can hear his powerful and moving words below.
Thank you, Mihaela Moscaliuc and the entire Department of English’s graduate school program, for the warm welcome! It was such a special and notable experience!
As we close out Black History Month, we’d like to give a huge THANK YOU to all of our Black instructors, students, families, and community partners.
Thank you for sharing your time, talents, voices, and stories with Project Write Now, as well as our community-at-large! We recognize and appreciate your contributions not just throughout February, but every single day.
With love & gratitude,
Here’s what else we’ve been up to this month. If you are interested in bringing a program to your school or organization, email executive director Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.
Asbury Park High School
- 12th Grade Dream Academy
The seniors have been working on creative ways to add details to their writing so readers can see, hear, and feel their stories. We’ve had fun creating lists of adjectives and nouns and mixing them up to create strange but unique combinations. Some of our creative combinations included aggressive packback, boiling dog park, sharp nest, and feathery feet. Then we used these creative pairings to write stories and poems using sentence starters. Finally, we chose our favorite adjective/noun combination and wrote a short piece titled, “My life is like a (adj) (noun).” The creativity was flowing!
- 11th Grade Dream Academy
We opened Black History Month by reading the poetry of Amanda Gorman. We spent time imagining ourselves in the future (choosing one year, five years, or 10 years from now) and writing about where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, or why we were there. We also reflected on what we need to do to get there. To close out Black History Month, we read Ross Gay’s “Sorrow Is Not My Name” and then highlighted the words that resonated the most by doing blackout poetry. We also wrote about what we are obsessed with or most curious about right now, inspired by Ross Gay’s passion for joy and delights.
- The Spoken Word Project
As if taking students from Asbury Park High School for Toni Morrison Day at Monmouth University weren’t an amazing enough experience, we also enjoyed an entire month of celebrating Black History Month with the Spoken Word Project students. From creating and co-creating communal poems to watching a video of Maya Angelou perform her notable “Still I Rise” poem, to some meaningful discussion on race relations, it was a heartfelt month of writing and sharing.
Big Brothers Big Sisters
We’re excited for the expansion of our partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters, now reaching into Middlesex and Ocean counties! In the last month, we’ve hosted sessions in Bayville Elementary School, Lacey Middle School, and closed out the month at Woodbridge Middle School. The sessions focused on poetry and storytelling, with both individual and collaborative aspects for students to write and share. Since the session at Lacey was on Valentine’s Day, we featured a special self-love theme for the mentors and mentees.
Communications High School (Wall)
Evolution, the literary magazine of Communications High School in Wall Township, invited us to come deliver a special workshop on spoken word poetry and storytelling. PWN instructor and staffer Meredith Avakian led an interactive session, sharing the journey of her careers in communications, writing and poetry, and then led the students through some writing and storytelling prompts, immediately followed by group sharing.
Free Write
Free Write is a virtual dedicated space for writing accountability. Writers check-in with a goal and then use the rest of the time to work on their writing projects. We’ve had writers from all over the globe write with us during this dedicated craft time. Join us for Free Write and make time for your own writing!
Lunchtime Write-In
On Fridays, we host a one-hour writing workshop on Zoom during which we write in response to themed prompts. This month, we explored the themes “Groundhog Day,” “Crash,” “Blue,” and “Yellow.” Recently, one of our writers wrote this incredible poem about Lunchtime Write-In during Lunchtime Write-In! Though writers never have to share, we always enjoy hearing one another’s pieces and have formed an incredible, supportive community. Join us for our next Lunchtime Write-In to see what our upcoming themes will be!
Monmouth Stars
During the summer, we collaborated with STEAMpark and the Monmouth County Vocational School District to provide a four-week, full-day summer camp with more than 40 4th through 7th graders at Red Bank Middle School. On Saturday, February 24, we held our fourth school-year meetup. It was so great to reconnect with our students for math, book club, and writing. For the writing portion, we had students do heart mapping, drawing a giant heart and writing about all the people and things that are in their hearts. We can’t wait to see the students again next month.
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (Asbury Park)
We wrote mad libs, played with words like puzzle pieces, participated in word circles, created blackout poetry, celebrated Black History Month during our weekly after-school workshops with middle school students at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel this month. Perhaps most notably, students were introduced to the work of Maya Angelou for the first time.
Parker Elementary School, Trenton (with STEAMpark)
We are excited to expand our programming to Trenton, thanks to our partnership with STEAMpark. We will be visiting the group once a month and this month we crafted love, confidence, and creativity in our special Valentine’s Day program. We expressed ourselves through writing prompts, journaling, poetry, community circles, and arts & crafts. We are looking forward to returning next month!
PWN India (Adults)
During our adult journaling club, we celebrated Black History Month and love by reading Rita Dove’s “Heart to Heart.” Then we created our own “Love Is” … lists. Some of our favorite lines shared were “love lies everywhere if you have a pure heart to see,” “love with your siblings is feeling you can kill that person for a packet of chips but still love that person to death,” and “love is listening with your ears open and your mouth shut.” We LOVE this journaling group!
Red Bank Middle School
- 7th & 8th Grade AVID (in-school)
This month our 7th & 8th grade AVID students at Red Bank Middle School have been focusing on their submissions to two major writing contests—Count Basie’s Freedom of Expression and PWN Teen’s Voice & Verse. Also, the reading of the poem of the day each week has been taken over by the students themselves! They start the class with a reading and they stay focused and on task with their personal projects. We all submitted to Freedom of Expression together just in time for the March 1 deadline and now we’re focusing on the finishing touches to submit to Voice & Verse. Their passion and dedication blows us away. We can’t wait to hear the results!
- PWN Quest Club (6th-8th Grades)
PWN Quest Club is in session taking our writing on a journey asking questions leading us to all sorts of adventures, tales, and…quests! Using questions pulled from our trusty quest box we found stories hidden in our answers. Students used lots of fun ways to tell their stories: play-doh, creating comics, and with good old pen and paper. In February students had the chance to be a part of Project Write Now’s community poem “Love is” prompted by questions like “what does love look like to you?” and “what is the difference between like and love?” Lastly, we’re slowly rolling out the club’s fan-favorite, speedwriting, where the students answer questions from the quest box in 2-3 minutes, aiming to answer about 5 or 6 questions in a 15-minute span. The students love the fast-paced activity and sharing their out-of-the-box responses.
- PWN Writing Club (4th/5th Grades)
The 4th and 5th graders have been working on specific writing techniques to draw the reader into their stories. This is in preparation for photo collage storytelling. Every student at every level will start with a picture collage independently. Upon completion of the picture collage, the students will write the story with whatever support that is necessary to allow them to be successful at their individual level. We have seen confidence grow as we’ve provided support to our students!
RBR Outside the Box: Art and Journaling Club
We were excited to kick off our Outside the Box: Journaling and Art Club winter session with The Source at RBR this month! Outside the Box: Journaling & Art Club uses fun prompts to inspire writing and art. Each student gets an opportunity to get their thoughts out and down on the page, create a story or poem, or escape into their own imaginative world. This dedicated time and space allows students to write, reflect, and reconnect with what really matters to them. We’ve used fill-in-the-blank journal prompts check in. We’ve filled up our win jar with accomplishments or things we’ve wanted to share that we’re proud of. We welcomed February by creating the first thing that came to mind when we heard the month “February” using Play-Doh. And we worked on our PWN “LOVE IS” project. We can’t wait to share!
Shore House (Long Branch)
February was a busy month for the writers at Shore House! The month began with celebrating the people who have helped uplift us during hard times by writing them beautiful cards. We also drafted our take on An Instruction Manual For How To Live A Happy Life. Finally, we were joined by Meredith Avakian for some self-love poetry writing and work on our collaborative poem titled, “Blue.”
Songwriting Studio
Our Songwriting Studio program has been meeting on Tuesday evenings at the Woman’s Club of Red Bank, a fantastic spot for writing! The lovely old house is atmospheric and inspirational. Together, we took a close look at a couple of our favorite songs, and then began writing two of our own. Some songs can take minutes to write and some can take years. Using our “song maps,” we worked together and got a couple of great songs started! Working individually, we all wrote lyrics for our very own 12-bar blues. Join us for the next session of Songwriting Studio, starting March 5!
Teen Writing Space
Our first session of 2024 Teen Writing Space came to an end this month, and it was so hard to say goodbye! In our six weeks writing together, we’ve really gotten to know one another through our stories. One student is even considering switching to another school where another student attends and they have been connecting outside of class as well to help make the transition. We love seeing these connections grow in and out of class. We can’t wait for the next session to begin. Join us!
Throws & Prose (Monmouth University)
We had a BALL this month in our Throws & Prose writing workshop in partnership with Monmouth University! With sixteen participants, we broke into four teams of four. Moving from pins to pens, we then used our game of bowling to inspire creative written works. We are so grateful for our partnership with Monmouth University. We look forward to doing more events together soon!
Zoom Open Mic
We hosted our second Zoom Open Mic of 2024 this month and it was incredibly inspiring! We loved the diversity of writers who came and shared their work—poets, memoirists, fiction writers, and even one songwriter came and sang his own original song. We are so grateful to all who joined us to read and support our writing community. Join us for the next Zoom Open Mic on May 3!
Scholarship Seats
Through our mission as a nonprofit organization, we remove barriers to participating in our fee-based classes by providing full and partial scholarship seats as well as payment plans. Since 2020, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the need for financial assistance and therefore have met that need by offering more scholarship seats. For 2023, we awarded 48 seats totaling $17,205. For 2023, we have already provided 18 seats totaling $7,295. For information about our scholarship program or to become a valuable donor providing these seats, please email Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.
Related posts
