If you happen to be in the Brooklyn-area and are free from 5:00-6:30 pm tonight, please join me for the Academy of Young Writers 1st ever Citizenship Night.
There, our seniors will present their work as part of Project Citizen. Project Citizen, sponsored by the Center for Civic Education, is a curricular program for students, youth organizations, and adult groups that promotes responsible participation in local and state government. The program helps participants learn how to monitor and influence public policy. In the process, they develop support for democratic values and principles, tolerance, and feelings of political efficacy.
Groups of seniors identified a public policy problem in their community. They then researched the problem, evaluated alternative solutions, developed their own solution in the form of a public policy, and created a political action plan to enlist local or state authorities to adopt their proposed policy. My students developed a portfolio of their work and are eager to present their project to civic-minded community members.
Students are taking on a range of issues, including:
- Cyber bullying
- Internet Privacy/Piracy
- Gentrification
- New York City School Reform
- Domestic Violence
- Animal Cruelty
- Trafficking
- Obesity
- Gay Rights
We hope you will join us to listen to what our students have to say, ask them difficult questions, and potentially help them begin to make the changes they wish to see.
The Academy for Young Writers’ Citizenship Night will take place on Tuesday, March 20 from 5-6:30 pm in the cafeteria of our current building at 183 S. 3rd St in Williamsburg.
(For those of you not in NYC, I will share pictures and more here in the coming days)
Outside the Cave 