You say potato, I say ‘starchy, oblong, pulpy, edible tuber. . .‘ Students participating in the Young Writers Camp learn to look at objects a different way. Jennifer Kirkpatrick, director of the camp, tells these students: “Think of writing as a snapshot. Capture the moment in time. Get the reader there with you. Revel in the senses.”

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There’s a wrong way and a ‘write’ way to approach reality. On one hand, there’s hours spent sitting in front of reality television; on the other hand there’s “Writing Your Own Reality,” a week-long camp for 10- to 17-year-olds sponsored by the Denver Writing Project in the Downtown Denver Campus’ Department of English. The second annual Young Writers Camp played off of themes of reality television shows, with 30 young participants pondering and then penning topics such as their most embarrassing moment (TV bloopers), their worst fears (Fear Factor), and heftiest hardships (Survivor).

“The whole idea is a multi-genre project,” said Jennifer Kirkpatrick, director of the program through UCDHSC’s Downtown Campus and Overland High School teacher for more than six years. “In the schools, we don’t have enough time for creative writing based on everything else we have to cover. This camp is a means to motivate kids, to tap into that passion for writing.”

Kirkpatrick is working with fellow Overland teacher Melissa Rude and Rick VanDeWeghe, director of the Denver Writing Project, to enable students from public and private institutions to develop their penchant for prose. The young authors’ efforts culminated in readings at the Plaza Building attended by about 40 parents, teachers and young authors. “All the students finished with a flourish,” VanDeWeghe said. “It was a proud moment for everybody.” For their commitment and their fruitful efforts, the students were awarded commemorative T-shirts appliquéd with a quote from John Lennon: “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”

VanDeWeghe said that while Kirkpatrick was coaching young authors, he was across campus running a summer writing institute for teachers. “Those teachers wrote letters to the writers in the young writers camp,” he explained. “The young writers wrote back and forth. This was writer to writer, not teacher to student.” He stressed it is important to think of the 10- to 17-year-olds as writers and not as students in order to build their profile as authors.

The program has been so successful that not only will a camp for new writers transpire next summer, but the project will also host an alumni writers camp for students who attended the past two years.

The Denver Writing Project is part of a national initiative to improve student writing and learning in K-12 classrooms and extend the use of writing in all disciplines. The project provides schools, colleges and universities with an effective professional development model and identifies, celebrates and enhances the role of successful classroom teachers.