In July 2023, the Intrepid Philanthropy Foundation hosted its tenth annual Awardee Convening honoring recent recipients of the LIGHT Awards grant. Awardees from the tenth cohort were invited to this event, which seeks to honor educators and cultivate connections within and across LIGHT teams, as well as energize the participants as they launch their projects.
Our project will serve teachers of students in a historically Black, disadvantaged, and low-income community facing severe environmental and social issues.
Play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith concluded, ‘The opposite of play is not work–the opposite of play is depression.’ While research supports this, traditional schools continue to treat play as frivolous and double down on the pressure to raise students’ standardized test scores.
We aim to cultivate passionate, independent student writers, as well as to grow as teachers and leaders. We all teach Writing Workshop (WW). Our goal is to give students meaningful writing experiences that reflect their identities, as well as encourage collaboration, perseverance, and a love for writing.