Mason Writers in the Schools

The Mason Writers in the Schools Program is an arts-in-education in-class and after school writing workshop that reaches over 600 Fairfax and Arlington students each year. Our mission is to bring creative writing workshops led by graduate writing students into classrooms where time to think and write creatively has been reduced. We hire graduate students in Mason’s nationally ranked creative writing MFA program to both teach and mentor students in local schools during once-a-week classes, fostering both the love of reading and the craft of writing.

 

Empowering Students with 21st Century Skills

Mason WITS empowers students with the confidence and resources to think and write creatively, understanding that better writers are better readers, and better readers are more likely to think for themselves, perform well on tests, graduate from high school, and succeed in life. Mason WITS programming fosters 21st Century Skills as students develop the art of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.

 

Expanding Perspectives

Mason WITS focuses on bringing global voices, diverse writers, and variety of writing styles into the classroom to promote our goal of expanding perspectives. In this way, students in the Greater DC/Northern Virginia area will see their lives and experiences reflected in our classroom readings. Furthermore, students will have the chance to develop a greater understandings of those who have experiences unlike their own. 

 

 

 

“It is true, I believe, that if literature has any social justification or use it is that readers can identify the common humanity in, and can therefore identify with, characters vastly different from themselves in century, geography, gender, culture, and beliefs; and that this enhances the scope of the reader’s sympathy.” — Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction