826 is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.

Education , Educational Services

During the 2013-2014 school year, we served 41 teachers and 1,990 students at 14 san francisco unified school district schools through our in-schools program. In this, our ninth year at everett middle school, we served students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades through our 826 writers' room and published three issues of the bilingual student newspaper, straightup news. At our other writers' room at james lick middle school, now in year six, we served students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades and created two issues of slick, a magazine for middle-schoolers. For our most intensive publishing endeavor of the year, we worked with seniors at thurgood marshall high school on a book, called unchartered places, which explores themes of physical and metaphysical place. We also added a third satellite program at buena vista horace mann k-8, and served 40 students daily after school with writing tutoring (resulting in two chap books) and 15 students through a weekly seminar (resulting in a magazine entitled say what). our after-school tutoring program remains one of the cornerstone programs of 826 valencia. During the 2013-2014 year, we hosted the program mondays through thursdays throughout the school year for 77 enrolled students, with an average of 34 students each day. Highlights of the year included two young writers' wall celebrations, where we honor six students and feature their accomplishments with full color portraits and profiles on the back wall of our writing lab, and two issues of look closer/mira de circa, our anthology of shorter student works. We also started a new program, called pathways, that is open on tuesday and thursday evenings to support 22 middle and high school students with their homework assignments. field trip program: during the 2013-2014 school year, we hosted 102 field trips, with a combined total of 2,346 students from local schools visiting our center in the mission district of san francisco for a morning of high-energy learning. The most popular field trip again this year was one we invented, "storytelling and bookmaking", where students write, illustrate, and bind their own books in two hours.