A lot of people believe that language skills make a good writer. However, that is far from true. A good writer needs to be curious and observant, but above all, empathetic. He/she should have a rational flow of thoughts, attention to detail, and in the end, he/she should be able to put all of it down on paper.
It is because of the above traits that we barely do any writing in The Young Writer/Journalist workshops. Our workshops are just meant to raise curiosity, trigger emotions, get them to experience something different, and then look at grammar and spellings. Not too much to our surprise, the last part has rarely been a problem, considering the demography our workshop kids belong to. However, our emphasis is on the first few parts.
I have found, that as parents, we have succeeded in giving our children the ‘good life’, a life of abundance, privileges, and even knowledge. Our kids are aware of their surroundings, but have only heard of the less privileged, never really seen them. Which is why, our first workshop used the background of the Evolution of the Earth, to teach children how lucky we are, to even exist, let alone thrive. They then created comic strips on ‘Saving the Planet’. In the second class, they created this poem, lending one line each. For the future workshops, we plan to introduce the children to children with disability, with those less privileged, to grow into empathetic citizens and build an inclusive society.
Many people call up asking, their children cannot build sentences together, yet can they join? Of course, they can! Because clearly, when their thoughts are clear, the language will flow naturally. In fact, fixing the language is the easiest piece in the puzzle. Many say that they are keen on the workshops, but their kids are not fond of writing. Our workshops are called writing/ journalism workshops, but they involve more of cognitive thinking across domains like sports, space, technology, culture, history, etc. Our endeavor is toward building conscientious citizens who use their communication skills to make the world a better place, is the tougher part.
At The Young Chronicle, it is this part, of raising our children as aware citizens of the future, that we as a team of mothers, is trying to work on.
