It’s no secret that our students have big imaginations, and this spring, our programs are simply bursting with creativity! To brighten your day, and perhaps spark your own inspiration, here’s a little peek at what our students have been dreaming up, from weird and wonderful Field Trip characters to a school where all the teachers are internationally famous soccer players.
We asked the students in our after-school writing program at Buena Vista Horace Mann to design a new school for the SFUSD school board and pen an origin story explaining who started the school and what need it filled. Fourth-grader Michelle wrote about a mermaid who was stranded in San Francisco, and so built a school with pools and water slides to get around, while third-grader Larry wrote about famous soccer players who decided to build a school where kids would be rewarded with soccer, and the teachers would all be international soccer superstars.
During a Storytelling and Bookmaking Field Trip, students from a 3rd grade class at Sunnyside Elementary penned a tale called The Life of Pizza in 2066, which takes place on Le Pizza Farme, where it rains tomato sauce and pizza grows on trees. The story follows the adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Anchovy, a two-headed walking pizza person with a stuffed crust mustache, and their sidekick Sir Jonut, a vegetarian gluten-free donut. Sir Jonut’s greatest wish? To try real pizza because it’s only ever had the gluten-free kind.
And finally, we were pleased to celebrate the release of Acompáñame/Walk with Me, the first-ever chapbook of student writing from Pathways, our evening tutoring program for middle and high school students. This publication features fantastical tales, dramatic monologues, and other bold experiments in genre—from a short play about the tentative friendship between Darkness and a girl who’s afraid of the dark, to a poem told partially in emojis.
Intrigued? Amused? Hungry for more? Check out our Student Writing Gallery for other tidbits of student poetry and prose.