“[Advanced Writing Seminar] was an amazing experience. A lot of us were sort of the one-off kids in our school communities. We were the token creative-writing nerds in our friend groups. So, it was nice being with other people who share that writing mindset and to realize I’m not alone in that.”
-Teddy Lykouretzos, age 18
The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Writopia Lab, a youth literacy development center that ignites a fire for writing, Rebecca Wallace-Segall has seen a dramatic change in reading habits during her time as a director and educator: “It is impossible to miss that change in our cultural landscape—phones have replaced books (and even in-person social activities) during downtime.”
“But I have witnessed in both school and at Writopia that the more social we can make reading as an endeavor, the more life we can breathe life back into it.”
“Students, like the rest of us, have always had ways of plagiarizing,” Rebecca Wallace-Segall, founder and CEO of Writopia Lab in Manhattan — an organization that promotes creative writing, focusing on children, teenagers and young adults — told NeoFeed. “What's new in this debate is the confusion surrounding the role of writing in students' lives.”
Two Writopia teens bridge cultural and political divides.
By Rebecca Wallace-Segall
In 1997, I interned at the Village Voice for Ron Plotkin, the legendary longtime Letters page editor. Within a few weeks, I was pitching and writing pieces about New York’s culturally rich but marginalized, mistreated, or stereotyped children and communities. I sat behind Ron as he edited, barking questions but also praise at me while teaching journalistic concepts. What I didn’t know at the time: Ron was laying the foundation for a warm but fierce and rigorous instructional teaching method that would impact over 50,000 children in the decades to come. Ron’s kindness, passion for justice and fairness, and high standards live on long after his passing, in 2002.
It is still hard to write about Ron’s death. I returned to the office once afterward; the seat he’d occupied for years sat empty. It was hard to enter the building without hearing his ghost banging passionately at the keyboard. I was 30. My heart hurt from loss. As Joan Didion said in The Year of Magical Thinking, “A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.” I walked around the vibrant Upper West Side, smelling the summer air and taking in the sea of families and children. Their banter and energy filled me with longing. How do I not know a single one of these children? Losing Ron allowed me to ask that question, and I began to look into ways I could connect with children—by asking them the right supportive and challenging questions to unlock their stories. Like Ron did for me.
By Susan Matloff-Nieves & Rebecca Wallace-Segall
All young people have stories to tell. Yet when children and teens declare that they hate writing or are too embarrassed to admit they like it, elevating their voices becomes challenging. It is urgent that educators, policy makers, youth development workers and leaders, and philanthropists work together to find a way.
