STORIES BY KIDS, FOR KIDS
written by: Annie Chisholm
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Teenagers are supporting children from low-income schools. Students in English 2010 at East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah spent their class period on Wednesday, May 22, 2019 writing short books for children attending school in a low-income area. They spent their B ⅚ class period creating a story and making illustrations to go along with it.
There were around 20 stories created by the end of the class period. “It’s exciting to think about these stories going to elementary students at a different school,” said James Christensen, one of the two organizers of the activity. There were
guidelines that the students needed to follow when creating their story. James and Jack Idstrom, the other activity organizer, asked that the stories include at least six pages and have a kid-friendly plot. “It was a little hard to think of a plot on the spot, but I had a lot of fun writing the story! It’s fun to think about someone else reading what I wrote,” says Jane Gardner, a student in the class who spent the period working on her story. After the students wrote the stories during the class period, James, Jack, and a few other students read through them to check on grammar, punctuation, and content.
Parents of students in the English class were very impressed that they were participating in so much service. Melissa Bergstedt, the mother of one of the students claimed that she “really love that [her] daughter is getting an education and serving her community at the same time. It’s so good for these kids to learn the importance of serving others, especially as they transition into the ‘real world’ after graduation.” The students were asked by their teacher to participate in at least 18 of their classmates’ service projects, but several of them participated in many more than that. “We needed to participate in a set number of service projects, like
creating the story books, for credit in our class. Many of us really liked being a part of so many projects that helped others and learning of needs in our community and abroad,” said one of the students, Taylor Hansen. Several students have expressed their desire to get involved with some of these organizations after they learned about them in class.
“We’ll be taking these story books to an elementary school that’s in need of them,” said James Christensen. “Jack and I were really impressed by our classmates willingness and enthusiasm to participate in our activity and serve their community.”