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?"

My experience as an intern here has been nothing short of eye-opening. Who knew kids in elementary school were this creative? Who knew they sought out help so hard? I didn't. I knew that one-on-one help boosted their grades, that additional focused time was needed outside the classroom, that parents trusted us at 826LA to help them get their work done correctly, but I never would have thought the students would go for it the way they do.

They write stories about shark monsters, pen haikus on the secret lives of wolves, shoot commercials about adults pretending to be young, giving the illusion that they're young enough to attend programming. They, in short, do everything I wish I would have had available to me as a student in grade school.

But there's something more than the excitement of the field trips where they, the students, publish books, or the workshops where they write songs with bands, or any of that. Today, when the skies are gray and their sweaters are wet and there is no immediate promise of unadulterated fun to be had here, the students still manage to make the trek to the writing lab from all around the eastside area, to sit with a volunteer and finish their homework and read a good book for the afternoon. Where they might pause for a moment in the middle of a math problem and think out loud, "I want to write a story about a horse. That flies, duh."