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Teresa is reading her piece about her grandmother, Baby, who tries to ride a scooter but falls instead, head over heels; eight stitches are required to close up her burst-open chin. The audience cracks up when Teresa rolls her eyes and tells us this grandmother is a judge! 

Teresa’s a Berkeley student who asked that her last name not be used in this story to protect her grandmother. 

“Read another story,” the children beg when she’s done. And Teresa obliges. “Do you want the story about a flying headless chicken or the one about the woman in Ecuador who was buried alive?” The chicken story wins the vote and Teresa reads again from her collection of family stories. 

For the fourth summer, I’m teaching at the Young Writers’ Camp under the auspices of the Bay Area Writing Project at UC Berkeley. This summer is my favorite – every child but one really likes to write. It takes no urging from me to get them started.  

Michael Pruess, is writing a medieval fantasy that he’s decided to turn into an epic poem with rhyming couplets. A girl from San Leandro is composing riddles, and another student is working on a disparaging letter to President Bush. There’s a spate of ill feeling toward Bush, but that erupts into hilarity when someone brings in Bushisms found in a book at Pegasus Fine Books on Solano Avenue. “Rarely is the question asked, ‘Is our children learning?’” the student quotes from an alleged campaign speech.  

“We Is,” we reply. 

We’re meeting this year at Oxford school in the north hills area where I teach reading during the regular school year. Ashly Graves is a student here. She takes the bus from Oakland each day and walks up the Eunice Street hill to come to class. Her remembrance of a childhood game when she pretends to be a baker is the piece she reads aloud today. Then another child reads her account of being stuck in an elevator, with a voice on the intercom offering reassurances as she hangs between floors. Her real life account eases my claustrophobic horror. 

Forty six campers come each morning to write for three hours. The teachers, Grace Morizawa, Peggy Heathcock and I, are consultants for the Writing Project and credentialed classroom teachers. We present writing strategies and see our ideas put into immediate creative use by these fourth through eighth grade students. 

This morning we talk about character development. Terry Xiao has worn her pajamas to class and brought a pillow. She tells us of the character she invented after reading “Captain Underpants.” It’s “Pajama Kid”, a super kid who climbs into children’s dreams at night with Good Dream Tablets, Bad Dream Zappers and a Nightmare Shield to deliver satisfying dreams. 

Once a week we gather in a whole group for a round of Author’s Chair. Children clamor to read aloud. One boy reads a list poem of things he likes which goes from abstract – peace, hope – to concrete, skate boarding. Another boy reads a description of the emotion hatred. His just dyed hot red hair flames above his notebook that he holds shielding his face to combat a touch of embarrassment. Campers read past dismissal time and still the audience sits and listens. 

My students say they love this Young Writers’ Camp because the writing does not have to fit an assignment like it does at school. Here there is plenty of time to write about whatever is intriguing. Only rarely do they get to read aloud to an appreciative audience at school; here it’s a daily experience. And at school, though no one says it, I believe their interest and facility with writing can’t be so deeply shared. Here we understand each other; to us there’s nothing juicier than writing. 

Parents who’d like their children to attend next year’s Young Writers’ Camp can contact the Writing Project at 642-0971 and ask for Paul Cunningham who will put them on a mailing list. 

Mary Barrett is a freelance writer and teacher in the Berkeley Unified School District.