Literacy Fellows
Understanding that skills in reading and writing are crucial for empowered and responsible citizens, the Literacy Fellows program serves to advance literacy as a way to break cycles of poverty in Hampton Roads and beyond. Fellows work to develop their own writing ability, while collaborating with outside organizations and communities to gain knowledge of the far-reaching implications of literacy.
Program Update
Spring 2024
This winter, The Literacy Fellows kicked off a partnership with Point O'View Elementary. There, the Fellows join a group of about twenty third graders for their lunch. They play card games, talk, draw, and read together in the school's library. The Fellows and third graders are enjoying getting to know one another. We also have been working with Dos Santos, a migrant advocacy group on the Eastern Shore. Fellows assisted with food distribution on Sundays and organized a fundraising drive in the Upper School, using the funds to put together boxes of supplies for migrants. The Literacy Fellows recently joined the Global Health Fellows for a discussion with Dr. Jennifer Kawwass '99 about the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling on IVF and together considered the medical, legal, and social implications of the decision. We also just welcomed our newest cohort of Literacy Fellows and are looking forward to our summer experience together in Charlottesville and Luray!
Fall 2023
The Literacy Fellows program has busily worked through a few things this fall. Continuing our partnership with the Achievable Dream Academy in Virginia Beach, we have met with the after-school program at Seatack Elementary to work with students through many different literacy-building skills. We plan also to work with at least one other elementary school this winter in addition to working with migrant workers on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, with the Dos Santos program that our Global Affairs Fellows also support. We published in our in-house press (Catapult Press) a second run of Tim Seibles’, former Virginia Poet Laureate and former Norfolk Academy Artist-in-Residence, original book Something Like We Did, a publication he has shared with fellow poets and scholars at writing conferences and workshops across the country. Literacy Fellows, in addition to learning to make really beautiful and challenging books of their own creation, have been reading and studying texts like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore, both studies in poverty, race, and law, some central concerns for the Literacy Fellows program.