It’s summertime, and the learning is going strong at 826 with lots of fun activities to keep our students engaged year-round. This year, we’re doing things a little differently by offering new field trips for visiting summer programs at our Tenderloin Center and reformatting our Exploring Leadership Summer Camp. Keep reading to learn all about our exciting summer adventures.
At Buena Vista Horace Mann, our Exploring Words Summer Camp is bustling with 120 students from our after-school programs and a special partnership with Jamestown Community Center. These intrepid explorers spend their mornings tinkering with science to create hands-on experiments—which include catapults, cranky contraptions, and making ice cream—and writing guides, reviews, and short stories about their discoveries. And science sure generates some great stories. At the end of the season, all those tales will be published in a chapbook. We can’t wait to see the final result!
At the Tenderloin Center, we’re welcoming students from summer camps all over the city to participate in writing activities that range from identity poetry to opinion pieces, to comic-book making. And to make things even more fun, their poems and pieces will be turned into podcasts full of vivid details. So far, we’ve hosted over 160 students in our weekly workshops and field trips—how amazing is that?—and we’ve been adding their stories fresh out of the oven to a collective mosaic poster that is hanging beautifully on our walls.
And that’s not all! This summer, Exploring Leadership Summer Camp moved back to our Mission Center, where students can now enjoy a revamped Writing Lab with new doors, floors, and comfy chairs that were added last year. Changes to this program also include more project-based activities and the opportunity for students to opt into Jamestown’s Summer Voyage program in the afternoon. But the focus of the ELSC program remains the same: helping students develop their leadership and communication skills through lots of writing and public speaking opportunities.
And last but definitely not least, the Young Authors’ Workshop will soon welcome high school students to our Tenderloin Center to explore a myriad of writing forms, including short stories, poems, personal narratives, and much more. This two-week intensive writing camp has been a success among our students, who, every year, enjoy the support of professional writers and artists while navigating their literary journeys. The program culminates in a reading event at our center, where students can proudly share their stories with their community.
With so many great summer activities, our students will enter the new school year feeling confident and supported thanks to our amazing volunteers!