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Just a Few Spots Left in Exciting Virtual Creative Writing Class For Middle And High School Students

Class Overview:
I am excited to again offer a virtual Creative Writing class for homeschooled middle and high school students as a Westfield Annex Class. The goal of this class is to get students excited about writing. Along the way, the class will help students to improve their grammatical fluency and writing technique, skills that will easily translate to any writing project they wish to tackle in the future!
The structure of the class is simple. Each week students will write one creative assignment. These assignments range from short stories to personal essays and poetry and are often inspired by a prompt relevant to that week’s class discussion. If their imaginations take them in an unexpected direction, our group will be happy to welcome surprises as well! These stories will then be shared and discussed within our supportive community. In past classes, this practice of sharing work with friends has engendered true enthusiasm and improvement in budding writers: hearing their peers’ efforts often inspires new story concepts and receiving constructive critiques improves their own writing. I will also personally and carefully edit each finished piece, returning students’ work with encouragement and suggestions for improvement on a weekly basis. As a result of this detailed and direct feedback, students are able to quickly improve and gain confidence in their writing ability.
One of the most wonderful parts about this class structure is that I can meet each student individually where they are, no matter what level of writing ability or enthusiasm they possess. If a student is already an accomplished and passionate writer, this class provides a wonderful forum for them to practice the art of writing, helped along by my suggestions and commentary from their peers. Our class also gives them access to a community of writers their own age. If a student is less than enthralled by the idea of writing, this class is flexible enough to allow them to try writing stories about things that they love. I have found that this student-centric approach often convinces even the most reluctant to get excited about writing—an outlook that inevitably leads to improvement in their writing skill.
In an effort to help students improve the mechanics of their writing, this class also includes a variety of grammar games, editing exercises and even a vocabulary competition in which competitors will vie for vocab victory! These are always a lot of fun—the competition was especially intense for last year’s Wacky Word title—but these games also help students to improve their written diction and syntax. In my experience, this combination of discussion, story sharing and goofy games is a winning combination to get students excited about writing. I cannot wait to meet all of your young writers!

Class Details:
When: Fridays from 10 – 11:15. But if you would be potentially interested in participating on a different day, please reach out to me because I am considering running a second class!

Dates: September 15th, 22nd, 29th, October 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, November 3rd, 10th, 17th, December 1st, 8th

Where: I will be conducting the class via Google Hangouts; I have used this platform in the past and it tends to work very well. In order to participate, students need access to a computer with an internet connection and a Gmail address.

Who: I am hoping to teach a group of students who are roughly 6th through 10th grade.

Cost: The class costs $240 ($20 per session). Payment should be mailed to Caley at 11 Westfield Road West Hartford CT 06119. I am only accepting a limited number of students because I believe that students derive far greater benefits from the close community that results from small class sizes. In order to secure your child’s spot, please send in a non-refundable $80 registration fee by September 10th. The remainder of $160 should be paid prior to the first class. If it is more convenient for you, please feel free to send the entirety of your class fee by September 1st.

Teacher Bio:
Caley Henderson is a Senior at Middlebury College, where she is majoring in Education: Privilege and Poverty (a self-designed major) and is minoring in Chinese Language and Literature. She has a 3.98 GPA. Caley is passionate about education and teaching and has significant experience doing what she loves. In the past five years, she has offered twelve courses for homeschool students including classes in debate, art, literature and writing. These class offerings include five creative writing classes, one week-long summer creative writing intensive and three popular virtual creative writing classes. For the past seven years, she has also been tutoring students of all ages in a variety of subjects including writing, English, math, history and SAT prep. She has been trained and certified as Middlebury College peer writing tutor.
Caley spent the past semester studying Mandarin and education in Kunming, China. She then participated in a research internship with REAP (the Rural Education Action Program attached to Stanford University), conducting interviews and writing narratives for their website. She will continue to work with REAP in the coming semester, helping to research and write an upcoming academic paper. Prior to working with REAP, Caley has worked as an intern at the Connecticut State Department of Education; a curriculum developer and debate teacher at the Legacy Foundation of Hartford’s summer program for underserved students; and the designer and director of the Advocacy Elective Program at the Westfield Academy of Debate, Model United Nations and Leadership Summer Program.
While at school, Caley loves to debate. She has served as the President of Middlebury’s Debate Society for several semesters and has won several speaking awards in her time at college, including Novice Champion at Dartmouth, and has been selected to compete at the the World Universities Debating Championships, the Pan-American British Parliamentary Championship and American Parliamentary Debate Nationals. In addition to debating, Caley also leads the Middlebury Student Quaker group on campus and is committed to service work. She is a weekly volunteer at The Charter House, a local warming shelter and a transitional housing organization, and previously sat on the Board of Directors of an established Addison county non-profit called HOPE (Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects).
Caley was the salutatorian of her high school class at Kingswood Oxford, was selected as a National Merit Finalist and received a perfect score on the verbal section of her SATs. While at high school, she won numerous other academic accolades, including the Chinese Language and Culture Prize, the Stewart Prize for Best Debater, the Goodman Banks Prize for Excellence in English and more. She qualified for the US Team and competed in Australia at the World Schools Debating Competition. Caley’s twenty-seven page senior thesis received one of two commendations awarded to her grade.
Caley has always loved debating, Irish dancing, making art, hiking, reading and especially writing. Most importantly, Caley truly loves teaching writing and is very excited to read the wonderful works that you will all create!

If interested, please contact Caley at caleyhenderson@gmail.com or call at (860) 913 – 1446. You can find the official Westfield Annex listing here. We only have a limited number of spaces available, so please reply soon!