VALDOSTA SENIORS COMPOSE: Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future
During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Google and the National Writing Project teamed up to create Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future. Deadline for submissions will end October 31st with the Historic presidential election ending four days later.
The project offers middle and high school teachers an opportunity to channel student interest in the Presidential Election into writing for real audiences and purposes, and the project provides a national online reading and writing opportunity for students age 13–18. Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future also introduced students to Google Docs, an online writing and editing tool that allowed students to compose pieces for publication on the Internet.
Visitors to the website can read writing by students encouraging the candidates to give attention to the issues that students feel are central to their future. Topics were chosen by the students themselves to reflect their specific personal, regional, and age-related interests, and teachers supported student writing and publishing in a way that most directly fit their local curricula and educational goals.
We invite you to read the letters. And who knows, the future president may read them too.
A former National Writing Project participant and current AP Coordinator at Valdosta High, Judy Martin, assigned this research project to encourage students to make ‘informed’ decisions as well as to synthesize convincing, research-based arguments into their own writing. These young people will become the citizen orators and leaders of the twenty-first century. More importantly, these young adults are the voters of tomorrow who will influence America's future for generations to come. The individual’s role in History belongs to all those who choose to be an active part of it.
Access the online web site at www.letters2president.org . Viewers may search by State or teacher’s name to locate local student publications. At present Valdosta High and Colquitt High in Moultrie are included in over 1582 letters from 74 schools in the National collection.