A Series of Small Gestures: Embracing Conversation and Storytelling in Our Spring Professional Development Sessions to Help Reframe the Way Kids Think About AI, Get Kids Excited About Reading, and Help Kids Shine Their Inner Light

By Matthew Jellison and the Instructors at Writopia Lab Each spring we hold a series of professional developments for our instructors that expands our resources and punches in on a specific element of our teaching practice. Last year, we focused on the hard skills and how we can fold grammar and mechanics into workshop holistically. …

Struggle and Growth

Written by Matthew Jellison, Associate Director of Education, Writopia Lab I’m struggling. This is good, actually. Isn’t struggle at the center of learning? I always remind the instructors at Writopia—the writing and education non-profit where I oversee the professional learning of our network of adult writers who teach writing to kids and teens—that discomfort can …

March Submissions Opportunities

Worldwide Plays Festival 2025: Light Up The Dark! Poetry Society of New York First Annual Youth Poetry Contest Deadline: March 1 for writers eighteen and younger who live in New York State Submit three to five pages of poetry for cash prizes. An exciting organization! Rawling Society Contest Deadline: March 1 for writers in middle …

The Art of Losing: How A Botched Game of Literary Bingo Inspired An Educational Forum with Our Moms

By Matthew Jellison We were losing literary bingo when the thought hit us. We were surprised to be losing. After all, Malcolm and I have spent the better part of a decade working in literacy, and Yael about a decade and a half. We are (affectionately speaking) literary nerds. In the office we share, Yael …

I Am Curious…

by Bianca Turetsky At our last virtual retreat we took an exercise from Brene Brown’s book, Dare to Lead, and through the process of elimination discovered what our core values truly are. In the busyness of day to day life, particularly these past two years, it’s not a question we often give ourselves the time …