826LA is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Our services are structured around our understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.
With this in mind, we provide drop-in tutoring, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications.
All of our programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student's power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.
The Echo Park Time Travel Mart now has... Pastports® and event tickets! You can also shop online for books, T-shirts, Poketo wallets, and posters. Also, this timestream's brick-and-mortar Time Travel Mart is open Monday to Friday, 12pm–8pm; Saturday & Sunday, 12pm–6pm.
Your contributions to 826LA enable us to offer our free student programs.Please consider donating. Thank you!
The 826LA printing presses have lurched back into action! 826LA East's Echo Press released the year's first chapbook, I Will Eat You and Gobble You Up, and 826LA West's Dogtown Books quickly followed suit with Elfin Loaves Like to Eat Humans. (Both are available at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.) Our after-school tutoring students worked hard on these potentially frightening and promisingly imaginative collections, and they're busy working on their next chapbooks, to be published in early December.
In other news, 826LA East has been working with high school students (from the Downtown Magnets and Fairfax High) creating their own 'zine, focusing on fashion, photography, design, and art, and our in-house newspapers, The Venice Wave and 826LA Good Times, are at work on the final issues of 2009. If you're interested in helping our students with their publishing projects, let us know at iwanttohelp@826la.org.
It's a rainy day here in Los Angeles: timid cars pack the freeways, trees strain under the weather, everything is just a bit more gloom than normal–everything except for 826LA, at least. Students are still swarming to the tutoring center looking for help on homework and tips on writing projects. "What if, say, my dinosaur friend ate people, but didn't swallow them? Like, he helped them get around faster, then spit them out. Would people believe that?"
As the first moments of 2010 grow steadily closer, 826LA is winding down this year with a bunch of great activities. And simultaneously, we're gearing up for next year! On our plate for '10: fresh field trips, creative new in-school project and on-site workshop ideas, and more, more, more after-school tutoring. It's going to make for some amazing products. (As you may know, we're running a project-based model at 826LA, which means that when students leave our activities, they've got something in the form of a product that may be as traditional as a magazine or as intangible as a pop song, as serious as a manifesto or as whimsical as comic.
Cast members from the hit show Glee autographed their favorite books and donated them to 826LA. These books are being auctioned as a fundraiser for 826LA this holiday season. By bidding on one of these you are not only getting a one-of-a-kind gift, but you're also supporting 826LA's free writing programs for youth.
Both of these beautiful cards were designed by Amy Martin (the designer of our popular Time Travel Posters, which also make great gifts!). They can be purchased in boxes of eight, or boxes of eight Holiday Donation Cards (with inserts). If you are planning to make donations to 826LA in honor of loved ones this year, we can include a beautiful personalized card with your gift. This card personalization service includes a customized insert, letting the recipient know about the donation.
They are 4½" x 6¼" with a blank inside, metallic and embossed details, and matching envelopes.
Left, 2008 826LA Ice Skaters Card 4½" w x 6¼" h, letterpress printed, blank inside, with matching envelopes.
Right, 2009 Future Snowflake Card 6¼" w X 4½" h, metallic and debossed details, with matching envelopes.
Please click to view the full card.
Cards begin shipping December 1. You can get these cards at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart or online!
Now that we are in our third week of after-school tutoring at both 826LA East and 826LA West, we have a steady stream of 20 to 30 students per day. We find ourselves working with some students who have been coming in since the beginning of after-school tutoring, students we haven't seen since last spring, students from summer ELL Camp who are back for more, and a handful of brand-new ones! As the students get settled into the writing lab, they’ve been noticing a few changes we've made over the past several months--a couple new computers, a new board game, a newly organized library of books, newly painted walls, new homework logs to fill out... As for us, we've seen homework involving everything from place values to idioms to hominids, and lots of post-homework writing projects about scary outer space stories and the reasons why students and tutors alike love pizza oh-so-much. With all of this reading, 'riting, and ‘rithmitic going on for the rest of the school year, we can always use plenty more tutors! Email iwanttohelp@828la.org to find out how to volunteer.
826LA and the Echo Park Time Travel Mart are proud to premiere the second collection of original time travel-themed posters designed by Los Angeles-based artist Amy Martin.
This year's collection is in collaboration with the The Federation for the Advancement of Time—because no matter when you live, it's always the right time for good temporal citizenship! Each poster promotes a civic message for good citizenship in the far past or distant future, transforming the predictable aesthetic of the WPA poster with ironic sloganeering such as "Fire Good…But Also Bad" and "Robots! Clean Your Drives Daily," coupled with clean, retro graphic design.
They are available now for pre-order at the Time Travel Mart online. Each poster is $19.99, or you can buy a set of 4 for $69.99. All proceeds go to 826LA; last year's posters raised over $30,000 for 826LA's programs.
Purchase them in person and meet the artist at The Echo Park Time Travel Mart! 826LA and Stories Books and Cafe will be hosting an open house with music, art, food, and drink on September 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Thanks to all the volunteers, interns, and special guests integral to the unparalleled success of 826LA's 2009 English Language Learner (ELL) Camp! Hooray! Our camp, which ran at both 826LA East and West, included students at all levels of speaking and writing proficiency. With twenty to thirty-five 12-and-under students showing up on our doorstep for every 2.5-hour session, producing chapbooks every week (e.g. a giant technical manual or a slide show of beautiful classwork), there was enough going on to engage even an emerging mind in writerly challenges. Each student left ELL Camp with not only spiffy books, but also more solid foundations in the modes of English communication that they might struggle to master in school.
As pictured here, they might find a restaurant at camp so horrid that their tutors cajole them into writing a well-structured letter of complaint. Or they might take an observational eye on a walking field trip, coming up with insights like, "We saw horse poop that looked like rocks with hair"! And most importantly, we keep with 826LA tradition by providing free needed services to our local communities, so the ending of ELL gives us a chance to thank Echo Park and Venice. You guys let us nurture creative voices in your community from the seed stage, plus stage an interview with a local beach pirate.
For more coverage of this and other summer programming, please follow our blog.
826LA is looking for interns! Come exercise your writing skills, work directly with teachers and students, and gain valuable experience in the many aspects of educational programming and event planning.
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STAPLES Gift Cards.
Trader Joe's Gift Cards.
High-speed color copier.
Digital video camera with external mic.
Digital projector.
White printer paper.
Notebooks and loose leaf paper for kids.
Erasers.
Pens.
Office tape.
Staplers.
Paperclips.
Large butcher paper pads.
Name tags.
Paper cups.
Drinks for the kids in tutoring. More »
