Phew. Monday Team Building. A Whole New Crop of Fantastic Writers. There Is No Community If It Isn't Built.

Week 4. As the parents dropped off their kids and the teachers were preparing to teach them, I went into my typical Monday panic mode, "Will this be the week that things go wrong?"

Nope. We welcomed almost 60 writers and tomorrow they will be joined by our 20+ scholarship teachers. Day one, however, team building. We've know from research that there is no successful written outcome without a strong community for which they write.

We are in week 2 of the Novel writing labs and the middle and high school kids are cranking. I went to the computer lab to see what was what and no one wanted to talk to me - they were 100% focused on finishing the mission they came in with - TO WRITE.

We are also finishing out Week 3 of Little Lab for Big Imaginations and the kids are beyond excited to collaborate with teachers and writers. They're excited.

I have to admit. I was a little nervous because numbers were down this year when we began, but we've had numerous people sign up again since week 1 and we're matching previous years - We Gotta Write, A'ight.

A week from today, the high school writers are upon us and we have a record number of those (with bigger kids, the work becomes scarier). We are in year 6 of this community work and it is paying off. It works. I can't wait to see what the writers produce this week!