The “Do the Write Thing” program challenges students to reduce violence and its impact on their lives.All across America, students are rising to the challenge of doing something to end youth violence. The Do the Write Thing Challenge gives middle school students an opportunity to examine the impact of youth violence on their lives. Through classroom discussions and writings, students communicate what they think should be done to reduce youth violence. In addition, they make personal commitments to do something about this problem.By emphasizing personal responsibility, the DtWT Challenge also educates adults about the causes of youth violence. Local community groups promote the program at the grassroots level so that teachers, school administrators, parents, coaches, and young people can bring youth violence into the open, where it can be examined and talked about in a constructive way. When students accept the Challenge, they become messengers for their own thoughts and ideas, which are ultimately more powerful than violence. We say to students, “Accept the Do the Write Thing Challenge. Who knows where it will lead?”In this case of the students highlighted within these pages, their commitment has lead to publication of their moving essays, poems, short stories, and plays. We present to you the writings of the 2014 Do the Write Thing's National Ambassadors, who hail from all across America: from Miami to Los Angeles; Houston to Boston; Utah, Montana, and New York; from Chicago to Atlanta; and many cities and communities in between.

The “Do the Write Thing” program challenges students to reduce violence and its impact on their lives.All across America, students are rising to the challenge of doing something to end youth violence. The Do the Write Thing Challenge gives middle school students an opportunity to examine the impact of youth violence on their lives. Through classroom discussions and writings, students communicate what they think should be done to reduce youth violence. In addition, they make personal commitments to do something about this problem.By emphasizing personal responsibility, the DtWT program also educates adults about the causes of youth violence. Local community groups promote the program at the grassroots level so that teachers, school administrators, parents, coaches, and young people can bring youth violence into the open, where it can be examined and talked about in a constructive way. When students accept the Challenge, they become messengers for their own thoughts and ideas, which are ultimately more powerful than violence. We say to students, “Accept the Do the Write Thing Challenge. Who knows where it will lead?”In this case of the students highlighted within these pages, their commitment has lead to publication of their moving essays, poems, short stories, and plays. We present to you the writings of Do the Write Thing's National Ambassadors, who hail from all across America: from our very first program site of Washington, DC; to the gulf coast in New Orleans; to Los Angeles, Colorado, and Montana; from Chicago to New York; and many cities and communities in between.

The "Do the Write Thing" program challenges students to reduce violence and its impact on their lives.All across America, students are rising to the challenge of doing something to end youth violence. The Do the Write Thing Challenge gives middle school students an opportunity to examine the impact of youth violence on their lives. Through classroom discussions and writings, students communicate what they think should be done to reduce youth violence. In addition, they make personal commitments to do something about this problem.

"This book contains a compilation of writings by middle-school students who were selected as the top 10 finalists of the 2023 Do the Write Thing program. This book will be shared across the community in recognition of all of the students who accepted the challenge to share their voices and help create a safer, more peaceful society"--Page 3.

This innovative resource provides teachers with a road map for designing a comprehensive writing curriculum that meets Common Core State Standards. The authors zero in on several big ideas that lead to and support effective practices in writing instruction, such as integrating reading, writing, speaking, and listening; teaching writing as a process; extending the range of the students' writing; spiraling and scaffolding a writing curriculum; and collaborating. These ideas are the cornerstone of best reseach-based practices as well as the CCSS for writing. The first chapter offers a complete lesson designed around teaching narrative writing and illustrates tried-and-true practices for teaching writing as a process. The remaining chapters explore a broad range of teaching approaches that help students tackle different kinds of narrative, informational, and argumentative writing as well as complexities like audience and purpose. Each chapter focuses on at least one of the uncommonly good ideas and illustrates how to create curricula around it. Uncommonly Good Ideas includes model lessons and assignments, mentor texts, teaching strategies, student writing, and practical guidance for moving the ideas from the page into the classroom.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

DECIDE is the first book in a series of seven, speaking to how we can manifest the lives we really want as opposed to simply getting what we get. The first step is to simply have more than an idea but to be specific as to what it is we want. DECIDE is also meant to show that not only is it possible to get exactly what you want, but that we create our reality even now as we speak. DECIDE is but the first step in understanding just how we've been creating our reality up to this point as it is intended to take the mysticism out of the law of attraction and bring it into the realm of "real life" terminology and out of the realm of magic or superstition by pointing out that the law is you. DECIDE is meant to be your practical guide to becoming conscious of not only what we've been doing, but also of just what we are capable of. DECIDE is not only filled with ancient, proven wisdom, it also includes real life examples of the author's life to show how these principles play out in real life as opposed to simply reading about the law of attraction and how it has quite probably been playing itself out in your life but you may not have recognized it.